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Online dating is a skewed game (for M/F), if you're in the top 2% of attractiveness for men it's great - otherwise it's not worth it. This is compounded a bit by region, if your dating market is pretty even or skewed where there are more women than men (NYC/DC) it gets a lot better (I suspect actually for both men and women, but don't know) - in the bay area it's not worth it.

Women get a lot of matches which while a lot better than no matches (can go on dates, get practice, etc.) leads to a filter problem. Many (based on OKC data [0]) tend to pre-select based on attractiveness*, so the top 2% of men get most of the matches, which pre-filters out high quality candidates that would have a chance in real life. It also leads to lower quality interactions (since those men have more options anyway).

If you're a woman with hundreds of matches it's not really a surprise they'd be multi-tasking on a zoom date, the dates are abundant - each one has low value. This shifts as people get older though - if I had to guess that's probably part of why your recent matches improved after 5 yrs, suddenly there are fewer men available and the competition heats up (both because there are fewer available men and because there are more younger women getting more attention).

If you're a man that gets one match at best every other month, they're so scarce the value is high. I think honestly women and men have a poor sense for how extreme the difference in online dating experience is.

We're not that different from other apes in a lot ways, if you're not really good looking and you're in a skewed market online dating is a bad approach for you (imo).

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-Identity-What-Online-Offlin...

* Men do too obviously, but not to the same winner-takes-all extreme (based on the OKC data).

I've been riding the dating app carousel for a few years now. I've had some good experiences and met some really great women, so I can't complain too much, but I do agree that it's a pretty rough numbers game for men. It can be depressing at times.

I kind of wonder if the app makers just viciously slashed the number of likes men can give out, if things would get better. You often see men just blasting swipes to the right through hundreds of women just trying for any scrap of match they can get. I think that really messes with things. As a result of this, women get inundated with literally hundreds of matches, and then proceed to ignore the vast majority of those matches because there's so many they're all virtually meaningless. And then men swipe more and more and more because they've realized it's really just sending out the dating app equivalent of a Nigerian prince spam email looking for any sign of life at all.

If you only give men say 5 swipes a day, maybe women would value the matches they get, conversations would actually happen, and people would actually meet. Just a theory.

The no #1 complaint I've seen among women online is that they get routinely used and ghosted. This suggests that when they try to sort through their hundreds of matches they tend to select for men with a lot of options who treat them as disposable.

Interestingly a lot of them also complain that physical attractiveness of the man isn't necessarily a good predictor of getting used and ghosted.

This sounds to some like a better problem to have but I don't think it necessarily is.

The best fix might be an objective feedback mechanism on dates that future swipers can see. The women who filter these men out will consequently pay more attention to the other men.

Of course, people will try to game it like nothing else so it would need to be a good mechanism that had inbuilt protections against this.

Then, they sell packages/boosts that remove the like limit, making tons of money :)

This is essentially what the dating app bumble does. It only allows women to match with men, not the other way around, ending the spam.

Actually that's not really what I mean. Bumble's system doesn't cut down on the "women have too many options" problem because men still have tons of likes/right-swipes to distribute. Women have to message first, but they still end up inundated with countless matches they won't talk to.

I think Bumble does cut down on the amount of grief women deal with though--less disgruntled men are even able to send angry "why aren't you talking to me" messages since women have to message first.

I don't think limiting swipes will fix it - the issue is more on the selection side (who women choose to swipe) than on the seeking side.

The reason men swipe a lot is because even with that most get few matches (~0). If you limit their swipes then most will never get matches and they'll stop using the service.

Bumble solves little, many 'initial' messages from women are ".", "hi", or ":)". It's basically equivalent to a match where the men have to initiate contact. The pre-selection winner-take-all issue is still there.

I think you can't fix it via apps - because the issue is upstream sexual selection that's been in place for thousands of years. It's good to have an honest view of it though because it lets people navigate it rather than becoming bitter and miserable.

Even if you had an app where men make profiles and don't swipe at all, one where women just select people and then men get notified - you still end up with only the top 2% of men getting selected and women would have to notify someone they're interested who may not have mutual interest or message them back (a rejection of the type mutual swipe matches are supposed to avoid).

Also, I think at least some women like having hundreds of matches because it's a nice self-confidence ego boost (I think complaining about this is 'high-status' humble bragging). If you took that away I suspect they'd also use the service less. Most women don't want to actually be the pursuers (a lot of men don't want to be either probably, but don't have a choice) - sexual selection doesn't work that way among most other mammals, humans are probably not an exception. If you try to force it with an app I'd doubt it would work.

So this doesn't solve the underlying issue, and economically wouldn't work because men that drive income for dating sites wouldn't have much of a role to play beyond creating an account and waiting (even though functionally this is basically the action they're doing anyway for the most part on the other services).

Men need to play to their strengths - online dating turns you into a commodity competing entirely on looks. If you're not going to win in that arena (and 98% won't), get out.

> I don't think limiting swipes will fix it - the issue is more on the selection side (who women choose to swipe) than on the seeking side.

Right, but I think women are extra choosy on the apps (going only for that top X percent of men) because they can be, because literally every swipe is a match, because men just fire off the right swipes by the hundreds. Just thinking about this logically, if every girl I swiped on Tinder was a match for me, I'd probably be more choosy too.

If men didn't have as many swipes, women wouldn't have such an extreme amount of matches. Maybe they'd widen their net and invest more time with the smaller number of matches they do get.

Again, hypothetical. Maybe not.

> Even if you had an app where men make profiles and don't swipe at all, one where women just select people and then men get notified - you still end up with only the top 2% of men getting selected and women would have to notify someone they're interested who may not have mutual interest or message them back (a rejection of the type mutual swipe matches are supposed to avoid).

Where do you get the 2% number? Just curious.

> I think at least some women like having hundreds of matches because it's a nice self-confidence ego boost (I think complaining about this is 'high-status' humble bragging). If you took that away I suspect they'd also use the service less.

So the cynical part of me does kind of agree with this. I do think there's some percentage of women who aren't even on the apps for meeting people. In that sense, the overwhelming number of matches is an ego-boosting feature, not a bug they would like to see fixed. I'd like to think this is a small percentage, but I'd be curious to see data on this.

> Where do you get the 2% number? Just curious.

It's an imperfect number, but it comes from one of the graphs in dataclysm. It was a graph that paired attractiveness vs. amount of incoming messages.

For men messaging women it's mostly linear (more attractive women get more messages, but the high end gets maybe twice as many as the low end).

For women messaging men, it's a flat line at zero until the top 2% of male attractiveness at which it ticks up (a bit, still pretty unusual even then).

This is an imperfect metric because a lot of that skew is around who initiates at all which mostly falls to men, but it's tricky to get perfect data. Swipe data would be better, but dataclysm was written before the move to swiping mutual matching started (and now the sites don't publish anything interesting).

I'd predict the swipe data would match the initial message data similarly, it'd be interesting to see it.

> Maybe they'd widen their net and invest more time with the smaller number of matches they do get.

I'd suspect they'd go to other apps where they have more power (and the men would follow).

I doubt it would be that challenging for the apps to rebalance things. All they have to do is say if a user has X number of likes per Y period, stop showing them so much.

I guess they’re all working on the Yahoo! model though—don’t work too good or else people would quit before you make money off of them. But I bet someone could come up with a business model that makes money off of finding good matches for people and incentivizes good behavior.

I think they're fighting an uphill battle because these incentives are sexual selection incentives. There's not much you can do to 'fix' them.

I think what happens is that both sexes go through it and come out the other side. If they were lucky enough not to pair off with a bad mate early they can then choose more wisely.

For a lot of men this means being unhappy and lonely in their 20s, for women it means being unhappy while sleeping around a lot in their 20s. Eventually people figure out what they want.

I'm not sure an app can do much to fix that.

Sexual selection's affect on behavior is a powerful thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7QZnwKqopo

I place most of the blame of the terrible state of online dating squarely on Match Group.

OKCupid was a serviceable platform until they took step after step to monetize it, on top of making everything a series of 'swipes'. It reinforces the idea that people are able to be just discarded, which is a real shame.

Frankly, I would love if somebody could get a hold of the old OKCupid codebase, back when matches were based on hashtag type matching, Didn't allow photos in chat (eliminates certain types of harassment,) and perhaps added a 'one-time-verify' fee. i.e. Pay 10$ to get yourself verified with a photo-ID, and perhaps have some sort of 'review fee' for reporting; if you report someone and it was found fradulent, -you- have to pay 10$. If the report was valid, the other person gets banhammered.

So simple, but it doesn't make money.

> I honestly cannot stand online dating. In all my years real-life dating, online dating had substantially worse experiences.

I’ve talked about this recently, but I feel like the culture around dating apps has a way of stripping everyone down the the most generic, basic image of themselves. I really can’t imagine connecting with someone based off a few pictures and text snippets and developing any sort of mutual attraction via a brief period of text messaging.

Unfortunately it’s the only way it seems for me to meet people. I go out and all, but I’m often the youngest person in any place I’m at by at least a decade. I’m also very boring when sober, at least superficially and stupid while drunk (although the latter can at least lead to a fun night). I can’t see anyone being remotely interested in or attracted to me without at least months of getting to know me.

Most of my peers I know in a relationship, got it from being in an institution where they were forcibly around their peer group. Think high school, college, military, or even casual groups where shared interests were common (unfortunately I’ve failed to find one of these myself). I really haven’t had any of these. Was kinda a loser through most of school, around high school really put my focus in other things that totally failed, never went to college and ended up directly in the workforce. I’m still kinda a loser, not anything you can see explicitly, but a few important facts can reveal that. I don’t think I’m terribly unattractive, well besides being underweight and not photogenic (for some reasons 90% of photographs taken of me don’t look right, particularly but other people), but I’ve seen much worse make it.

If you don't like your pictures it's easy enough to hire a professional photographer to take some candid shots with a proper camera and good lighting.

I found my partner through a common interest and I'd suggest it as a preferable route for most folks looking. Do the things you enjoy and be open to friendships and other relationships with the people you enjoy doing it with.

I would admit that I'm rather introverted and never really felt the need to seek a relationship specifically - I was pretty happy existing on my own until I found a good partner.

And if you’re interested are too niche, force yourself to press tone interested in things you don’t really care about right?

Can't really do this, when it's incredible boring or bad.

Agreed. In my experience with yoga and book clubs the females tend to outnumber - sometimes significantly - the males.

I'm sure there are others.

Even in hobbies that are usually seen as male dominated like comic books and video games - you'll find a significant number of women that are interested, though they may be quite defensive due to constantly being pursued.

Then your back where you started with the ratio issue.

I think if you're thinking about a "ratio", you're kind of missing the point of these past few comments, which is to explicitly _not compete_, but instead just pursue happiness and attempt to make connections on the way.

If you're saying "But the ratio is off", your motives are probably incorrect about whatever "thing" you're thinking about doing.

I followed the comments. I just don't see how not explicitly competing is consistent with pursuing happiness (polygamous relationships excluded). Even if one is not in a real or hypothetical competition with others for the exclusive reciprocation of one's interest and feelings, one is always competing with time and the opportunity costs that come with naive and fruitless decisions. The ratio is a major factor in that calculus. The massive amounts of time sifting through chaff is time taken from obtaining wheat. There's little gain to go any further. Happiness depends on an achievable end, not having hope strung out before you like a carrot on a stick. If you have no expectations then there's no point in doing anything. In these proposed meetup scenarios of common hobbies, we are assuming the best case that:

*one derives joy out of the endeavor itself

*one just so happens to find camaraderie with a group of strangers

*at least one of these strangers is of the sex that appeals to oneself

*this particular stranger is single

*this particular stranger is open to dating in this group

*this particular stranger finds one, among others, to be worth dating

*this particular stranger is receptive to one's advances

*this particular stranger chooses one ,out of a bevy of potential suitors, to be the one and only S.O. (for the time being)

Any of these circumstances can and do go wrong more often than not. Pretending that one can just wait and see and everything might turn out well is leaving everything to a self-deceiving lottery. In which case, why bother? What's the point? After all, someone could just as well fall out of the sky. The chances are about the same.

Your assertion is that "one derives joy out of the endeavor itself", in reference to the cultivation of a hobby, "can and does go wrong more often than not"?

I kinda stopped reading after this part. Best of luck in your search I guess.

What assertion? One can cultivate a liking in a mutual hobby in a way that puts the other person off. For example, in political activism (which has been responsible for the creation and dissolution of many relationships) even if two people agree on same basic premises, that does not mean they share complementary motivations or standards in such a way that is conducive for one to want a relationship with the other person. And yes, as every human being has led a distinct life there will, more often than not, be differences in expectations and desires between two people and that likely will lead to something going wrong. That disproves the point that simply being in proximity to someone of the same hobby is necessarily an advantage.

You're again still focused about ratios and optimization and I'm again pointing out the original prompt was to cultivate hobbies without regard to ratios and optimization.

I'll butt out (as I unsuccessfully tried to do before). Enjoy your day!

you're missing the point. no matter how pure everyone's motives are, it's a mathematical fact that 7 men and 3 women aren't going to end up in heterosexual pairs.

That is a _rough_ way to live life, breaking down potential hobbies into “mathematical” ideas around probability to find a mate. I mean no disrespect, but that also sounds like a huge red flag in potential partners. “My only interests are optimizing the odds of finding a mate” is obviously not going to lead to an interesting and fulfilling life, both of which are usually important in and outside of relationships…

Perhaps that's why this is not always s good idea:

> I found my partner through a common interest and I'd suggest it as a preferable route for most folks looking.

(which then turned into a discussion of interest groups)

If you want to enjoy a hobby, enjoy it without the expectation of finding a mate. If you go in with that particular expectation, it might consume your enjoyment of the hobby. Plus, your odds aren't necessarily that much better, because of the reasons a poster above mentioned.

If you want to join a book club because you like books, do so. If you want to date someone, also do so (through apps or otherwise). If, however, you find someone who likes you at said book club, good for you! But please don't make everyone In the book club feel uncomfortable by making it obvious you're there to also look for a mate.

In the world there exist more women then men - I think it's reasonable to assume that homosexuality and asexuality are pretty gender independent factors, so there are more women looking for a relationship than men. It isn't a ratio issue - with apps it's my opinion that the experiences they provide are inherently toxic and drive away a lot of the potential customers - but this isn't an issue with society at large.

Most of the, for lack of a better term, "extra" women of the world are widowers who outlived their husbands between their 60s and their 80s. Few of them are going be as springy as Madonna. I doubt the ones among them that are looking for a stable relationship are going to be compatible with 20-40 year olds looking for an energetic partner.

Areas where there are a surplus of contemporary women have language barriers and cultural differences that make a relationship more prone to dissolve. It's not impossible, but there are more problems than gains unless there's some quality that offsets those disadvantages (i.e. desperation to be married, partner has money or is of a favorable nationality, desire for a certain temperament in a partner, etc.). And this is on top of the usual issues and tradeoffs of a relationship. All things being equal, it's much easier to have a partner of a similar nationality or cultural understanding than going international.

While none of this changes your point about how "toxic" online dating is, let me remind you that the source of that "toxicity" is the people themselves. People are willing to take others for granted unless or until there's something in it for them not to so. This is also the case IRL in diplomacy, friendships, families, and all sorts of interpersonal relationships. The difference is that online dating brings a more brutally honest version of this dynamic into full view. No couching in euphemisms, no friendly facades and handshakes, and no "I regret to inform you...". Just an unspoken "show me what you've got". If you think this isn't practiced in society at large in some form or fashion, then it suggests you haven't looked closely enough.

> I think it's reasonable to assume that homosexuality and asexuality are pretty gender independent factors

Um, no. You should check these things rather than assume. Male homosexuality is much more common than female.

Where are the women interested in purchasing and restoring 30 year old VAXstations ;)

I would find it pretty difficult to find a man interested in purchasing and restoring 30 year old VAXstations - that's just an extremely niche interest.

Yeah I was just joking.

Met my wife while volunteering (running a fundraising quiz night) for a youth breast cancer charity. Ratio there was pretty favourable.

> I'd take a non-reply over that sort of signal.

My understanding is that women get so many messages that they're overloaded and invest most of their time replying to top candidates while folks lower on the totem pole get dismissed curtly or ghosted.

And it makes sense, we all treat non-scarce resources pretty wastefully.

The question is are dating apps still worth it even though it makes you feel like a commodity?

It's no different from job hunting or college admissions. We're all commodities. The more important question is whether the commodity is worth the effort. In online dating, the reasonable answer for all but a few people, certain special considerations notwithstanding, would be "No". Instead the average American male is either better off leveraging his under-appreciated qualities internationally in some from of sexual arbitrage or waiting until sexbots arrive.

You should get into C#, that lets you declare as many properties as you like.