‘Why am I talking to 10 guys?’ The rise and fall of dating apps
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This works so much better than swipe-and-chat, because you become much more selective in who you like (keeping you from swiping endlessly) and because it's so focused on getting people to meet IRL I imagine it has a much better higher success rate than Tinder et al. Needless to say, I met my SO through the app after using it for a couple of months. :)
> Ironically, both genders are motivated by the same factor not wasting time but we do it in reverse. To overgeneralize, women think: Why waste my time meeting in person if I'm not into his personality? (Then Tinder-messaging is used to help screen for personality.) And men think: Why waste my time Tinder-messaging if I'm not going to meet her in person?
Source: https://www.glamour.com/story/tinder-guys-dont-message
This was not my experience at all. 1-3 days of chatting would destroy any chance of ever meeting someone for me. Having a nice intro chat immediately followed up by a question to meet or exchange numbers within the first 10 messages worked significantly better than trying to have meaningful chats over tinder. I find that the first excitement of a match very quickly tapers of, so either you build on that initial momentum to transition into a date, or interest will fade quickly. Because let's face it, you'll both match other people in the mean time, and then those new matches become more exciting than coming up with new small-talk when the first few messages have become stale.
Getting to know a person works better face to face, so I'd rather be quick to move to that stage, and be more selective about who I think I might want to spend a first-date hour with. (My go-to was to grab a beer at a bar and then see if there's enough interest to spend the rest of the evening together walking through the city).
I tried to setup a meeting within 10-15 messages and it worked, I'm in a second relationship that started from Tinder, one lasted 4 years, current one is going on for almost a year. Moving to a meeting is the most important step, noone wants to maintain tedious in-app conversations with dozens of people for a long time.
Also, be creative, ask whatever comes to your mind, even if you find it weird, all the girls I met were bombarded with either boring jokes, repetitive compliments or 'Hi's. After first few it's impossible to answer nicely or make a conversation out of those. I got best conversations out of weird questions, I asked what pierogi does she like f.e.
Okay, finally a place I can ask this. I hope you and others can explain. Why would exchanging numbers (or Snap accounts, etc.) with someone be a goal? You already have a way to communicate! I understand moving to in-person dating, but not to another way to text.
> I'd rather be quick to move to that stage, and be more selective about who I think I might want to spend a first-date hour with.
I think either you mistyped the funnel or I misread it. You make it sound like a first-date hour (or so) is given freely and first-date evenings are rarer. Which sounds reasonable, but also seems contradicted by the part I quoted.
If you think of apps as locations, you are switching from "meeting at the bar"(dating app) to going somewhere where you both spend more time "happily" (some other app/messaging). A lot of people used to swipe like two sessions a day, but would be texting/snapchatting all day. So you are inviting that person to be more present in your days.
It signals that you are willing to take one small step towards something vs. "just chatting on tinder"
Because you can then simply talk on the phone.
Phones are not just for texts.
Because it is the next step on the way to exclusivity.
On the dating platform you are one of potentially hundreds (or thousands) of message chains and easily overlooked. In their phonebook you are most likely not.
Inside the dating app messenger? No idea — her right sweep will mostly result in a match so you’re competing for attention with potentially a huge number of people depending upon how much that person right sweeps. (PS. I am not kidding — this could be true even for female profiles with zero pictures, zero details :D).
So it’s a way of getting filtered up.
That's fascinating, as somebody who loves this period and thinks of it as a requirement to find out my compatibility with somebody before we go on an actual date. If you're not up to scratch on the initial few days of chatting then I have no interest in taking it further. And I appreciate that many people aren't interested in this, but then it just means the two of us aren't compatible, and that's fine.
I believe the days messaging are a waste of time as I have no clue if a spark is there in person before I see you in the flesh. And very quickly, short time for physical attraction, and within 2-3 minutes for interaction, I can tell if there is the potential for something growing. None of that happens in messaging beyond very basic filtering of basic comms.
Messaging back and forth really doesn't mean much for me. I spend relationships with a person in the flesh, and message not very often, so initial contact on dating websites beyond a few basic messages back and forth are essentially just more dancing around before we get to the brass tax of whether there is any chance at all of attraction.
But that's me and how it worked for me and my partner. Everyone's different of course.
"brass tacks"[1], not "brass tax".
[1] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brass%20tacks
Yup, saved it jaunty, you've still got it.
I generally find people easy to talk to in person. All my romantic partners have been people I've met in real life. It's much easier to gauge their reactions, read their body language, etc. Waiting for a response on a chat fills me with anxiety.
Once I've met someone in real life, text chatting becomes much easier.
I've always just talked on the phone. I know a lot of younger people are afraid of phone conversations too, but I'm fortunate to be of an older generation for whom it's not a big deal.
I guess you could also try a Zoom date.
I think it has something to do with the absolutely abysmal audio quality of today's phones, which makes it a lot harder for some of us to process speech and hear the more subtle vocal communications.
Also when I moved to another city was a great way to get out of the apartment since I knew nobody there.
Going solo is counterproductive if your goal is meeting new people.
Certainly one way to deal with ghosting though - I can understand the reason behind it, but it's incredibly inconsiderate and harmful behaviour. On the other hand I've taken to double checking plans with people 24 and ~2 hours before they were scheduled, which sometimes helps people not forget about plans they agreed to a while back.
I can't imagine there's a data scientist alive who could devise an algorithm that accurately, reliably predicts "kind of a good match but not really", given only some limited inputs (basic info + photos).
I reckon from the company's perspective that positive word of mouth from people who like the app is a much better focus point.
Fair enough about word of mouth though, relationship durations are probably linearly correlated to the number of endorsements given by each customer - at some point in a relationship you end up with a rehearsed "so how did you two meet?"!
One approach would be to make the problem easier, just preferentially match people with a partner who is known to have short relationships and no/few awful reviews, based on history on the site.
Seems doable, frankly.
Then Match Group bought them out and mostly gutted that system and turned it into another swiper :/
There's still eharmony, but I think that's just for white Christian boomers mainly.
Short-term, probably yeah. But long-term, if they want to get a reputation like what parent describes ("I met my wife on platform X") then they better optimize for good dates rather than "unfortunate" ones.
Of course, Tinder is synonymous to dating for some, which is the weird part.
I'm not sure if such events still exist in this pandemic era, though, when people are afraid to meet face to face.
I guess there’s an obvious selection bias in the people I’m actually meeting, but that general fear seems to have dramatically dropped off by spring 2022 or so.
That's very strange to me - a date takes up so much time that I always want to go on a date only after I have some reason to think I'll like the guy I'm talking to.
Why would I get dressed, find a nice place, get there, and risk enduring a boring time with a stranger who I may have absolutely nothing in common with?
Also, for me, working out what to say on a dating app to someone I don’t know is a lot of effort. It might easily take me an hour to think of an appropriate reply. A date is actually less time wasted than 2-3 days of texting for me.
I like to say that anyone can be funny/clever/considerate/thoughtful/etc when you have 30 seconds or longer to come up with a reply. In messaging that’s normal but that kind of latency just doesn’t happen in conversation. Real time conversation in dating and meeting someone is much, much closer to the “real” person than texting via an app. Chatting in app is often closer to their social media persona (if that applies) or some other affectation.
Just showing up to a 30 min date (even if it takes a couple of hours all in) actually saves a lot of time and effort.
I can’t imagine texting/chatting with someone for days at a time only to meet up with them and realize they’re vastly different.
Don't get me wrong, I do think in-person conversation is much much better than chatting. If I happen to meet someone that I like while I'm already outside, I'd much rather talk then exchange numbers and chat, of course. But going on blind dates is really not doing it for me.
Do note that I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong, not at all! I'm just exploring this significant difference in outlook, it's interesting to me how differently people can feel about a subject. It also gives me some insight into other's behavior on dating apps that before I'd just seen as sort of rude or rushed, so I think this is an actually useful conversation.
Anyway, texting with a stranger is really hard. A good portion of the time (especially for men, from women) you’ll get things like “I’m bored, entertain me”. Maybe a good way to filter people out, but annoying.
I’d also much rather just block off some time on a schedule to actually meet someone than have them interrupt my life at any moment, react when I don’t respond in X time, etc. Generally it all seems very low effort and sporadic. If you get “going” in a text conversation you can easily spend more time than you would actually meeting them.
Again, maybe these are ways to filter incompatibility but extended and prolonged texting just seems like a waste of time - especially as it often leads absolutely nowhere.
Sorry to keep harping on this, but why can't people just talk on the phone?
It has all the real-time advantages you're talking about in your critique of texting, but doesn't require a trip anywhere, any expenses, or the risk of meeting in person with someone you might be able to screen out via a simple phone call.
The anti-Tinder, till-death-do-us-part market exists, and is likely somehow under-served. It's just a bit harder to market for, and the matching is much harder to implement than Tinder's.
Thus the same inherent flaw of non-representative profiles and pictures, to give false impressions or present a false image that can be used to trick others.
Things on peoples profile can not actually be confirmed, to include pictures and real life appearance not matching up. They can say they are a banker or a professional dancer, but are actually unemployed or have never done what they claim. So the beliefs people have, when going on the date, can still be based on deception.
The persons engaging in deception, only has to maintain the facade for a while, to hook the other person into a relationship. Not saying that such can be eliminated, because that's life, but rather no app can ever be foolproof. People, for whatever their reasons, will find flaws in it.
> ...but the the twist is that once you have a match you HAVE to go on a date. You have to enter your availability, pay 5 euro and if you don't show up on your date you get perma-banned for life.
This is a significant advantage of the app and community, which is cutting down on pranksters and time wasters. Thus would of course lead to a much higher success rate to Tinder and similar apps.
And about Tinder... Tinder of today, was much different than when it initially came out.
Many people don't realize that Tinder back then was quite Grindr-like (who they were copying), but mainly heterosexual, and heavily meet or "sexual encounter based", whichever you prefer. The culture and thinking was different. People showed up, because it could be a stealthy way to go have fun.
When Tinder tried to distance itself from the "meet up and encounters" perception and concerns, that opened the door to way more pranksters, attention seeking only, and time wasters. There was a shift in culture and who was using the app.
The Tinder of today has arguably become less focused on people meeting, but instead making Tinder as much money as possible and riding out to the last on its old reputation (of being Grindr-like), and usually at the expense of guys. Swiping left or right, by itself, is almost like any downloaded game.
Chatting is quick, convenient, low risk, and low-effort.
I personally prefer to talk on the phone to chatting over text, because it's much faster and you can tell all sorts of things about a person by the way they talk that you can't over mere text.
If you unilaterally decide it’s an unworthy stage of the process, that’s likely to be very self limiting and signals quite a bit about this person’s ability to “eat their vegetables of life.”
Another perspective: would you interview someone who just sends, “I don’t do well with résumés or phone screenings. Let’s jump to the interview.” ?
Edit: to more directly answer your question, if both parties prefer that then by all means! But that’s not exactly what this thread is about.
Hypothesis: this behavior is correlated with how many messages you receive, so very attractive men with a photographer buddy likely have the same approach.
If you have 10 suitors at a time, it makes sense to filter them using days of texting. Much less time investment than going on a date with each of them.
When you have 1 or 2 matches a month, the texting game is a bigger waste of time.
1) The so-called "dangerous ones", can be those that will play games, because they may have designated a target or are abnormally obsessed due to bad psychological issues.
Normal people, even more so for those of higher status, are likely not to have the patience to put up with detected nonsense or silliness.
2) Some are experts at online dating and playing along with such games, while others are not.
The filter that is created, are those that will say or type what the other wants to hear. So instead of a genuine interaction, it's lots of con games.
3) Stringing people along does not nor has ever proven to lead to successful long term relationships.
One of the major flaws in such thinking, is that by initially frustrating others, it will make them "prove" themselves. Some even taking it to extremes, to weeks and months.
However, this abusive behavior can become a filter, which leads to encountering those that will simply want to "climb the mountain" for revenge. After obtaining the relationship, its all the more sweet for them to break that person's heart (who initiated the game playing) by suddenly going ghost or bad treatment after having "accomplished the mission".
Overall, better to treat people as you wish to be treated and to be genuine in the interaction. Playing games, often leads to encountering those that like playing games too or possibly worse.
This is not a real thing. In fact once you go above 2-3 back and forth messages your chances of actually going on a date start to go down.
It's just a very efficient, very selective filter. And it should filter out the majority of potential matches :(
2 quick nice or funny replies and then ask someone out is ideal. Women don’t like wasting time chatting long either.
I imagine it would, since tinder is mostly used for hookups vs actual dating.
Online dating is problematic in many ways and very hard for men especially. I think women see men who use those apps as of lesser value anyway.
Therefore I think the best advice for men is to understand how women signal interest in real life. Some people pick it up intuitively but many people today have to learn it. Undercover Sex Signals by Leil Lowndes is a good book to start. Don't use online dating!
In my view nothing more than badly written psychobabble which probably does more harm than good.
Overall, a lot of guys don't take a moment to look more deeply into the overall picture of what is going on, but instead think everything is innate and/or are instead getting sucked into a game where they will constantly lose. Life is way too short for that. The argument more guys need to be making, is about what's truly helping their situation. Is the usage and way of using a dating app/site really doing that?
These articles offer no nuance or substance compared to the last. The woman here has many options (literally talking to ten different men at once!) but refuses to go forward with any. This is the crux of many of the articles. The girl and all her friends are hoping for the white 6’3” huge cock multi-millionaire intellectual adonis to fall into their lap and beg her to date him. I know a lot of these women IRL and they become spinsters because they keep holding out while they go past 30, 35, and then past 40. Some eventually fall prey to their baby panic and actually just marry the nearest guy to them and pop out a baby within 2 years of meeting the guy. Unfortunately, divorce follows a bit too often after.
The funny thing though is that it’s still worse for men. The number of single and never married men compared to then number of single and never married women only gets worse as you age - even though men kill themselves >4x the ratio of women and are born 5-7% more often. No, women are still the victims… always.
These apps are bringing in tons of money, at the expense of mostly men, to the advantage of mostly women. This is as clear as day.
Its only a "problem", in the statistically fewer situations where those with the advantage (primarily women) are inconvenienced by flakes, pranksters, con artists, catfishing, etc... Who of course would be attracted to these types of apps.
To include if the person they hook up with from such apps, decides they can do better (for whatever reason), and goes ghost or back to the same app to fish for more. Situations that happen to the average male users (who get massively less matches) of such apps continually and constantly.
It has gotten to the point where those already at a huge advantage and taking advantage, feel or believe they are owed a "win". If "he" doesn't meet dream requirements, because somehow they are near perfection (or the delusion of it), then something is finally wrong with the app.
Those making money from such apps, will be more than happy to respond with more gimmicks and pretend solutions. But a true issue like "their own lack of initiation and fear of rejection", is a truth that dare not be acknowledged or will be ignored.
This is an interesting and possibly misleading statistic. Do you know where you heard it?
Only if you don’t value your career. Or if you’re very attractive and therefore approaching office mates is low risk.
This is absolutley not women's fault or problem but if you are unattractive even hinting slightly that you like a person will be interpreted as being creepy. Outside of work you can accept the rejection right away and move on, at work, rumors will ruin you. I don't know about others but no romantic opportunity is worth sacrificing a career.
For me it isn't even just all that but making someone uncomfortable at their work place where they have to work with you everyday sounds like a horrible thing to do. What if they view you as an authority figure or feel like their rejection could affect their career/work? This is even before HR and managers get involved and you get a nice public humiliation. I mean, don't eat where you shit, right? There is plenty of other places better suited than work.
Or just be a woman. Causal sexual harassment and even sexual assault in the workplace is almost always just ignored or glossed over if it’s perpetrated by a woman. If a man reports to HR that his female boss grabbed his ass they’ll look at him like he’s mentally ill, or ask him if he’s bothered by it because he’s homosexual.
Even companies that have dating rules codified, like Google, have no issue with you asking out someone, at least once. Being rejected and accepting it shouldn't lead to the end of your career.
Or am I missing something?
Being asked out by unattractive people is creepy harassment in what is supposed to be a safe space, even if they only ask once and politely accept rejection.
An unattractive man asking out a woman from work is taking a 10x or 100x career risk compared to a very attractive man asking out a woman from work.
You start chatting to someone, you gauge their reaction, the chemistry between you, and take it from there if you feel that there is interest from the other side as well. It's probably better if you don't even ask them out on your first chat or the first day.
I wouldn't think it's a career risk to start chatting to someone at work, unless you continue doing so even after they've shown signs that they are not interested in talking to you, and then they're definitely not interested in dating you either.
I'm a gay man, who goes out pretty often, and although we gays are much more direct with each other, I have never gone up to someone and asked "do you want to go out with me?" or had someone ask me that as a first question. That would be weird even for us, who are okay with going to the dark room with someone we've only met three minutes before.
The situation is that you’re thinking there could be interest and are unsure. A lot of women are extremely reserved and as a straight man - anything short of a blatant no is not enough to stop because women don’t like to reveal their position often. A common story is a woman to completely ignore or harass a man and then later ask her friends, “do you think he likes me? God, he’s so attractive.” Many women will do anything they can to avoid showing how they feel about someone because they’re incredibly afraid of rejection. (Mainly cause most women never actually have to overcome rejection - men do it for them)
Dating women is much different than men. It’s very different. All the gay men in my life are endlessly perplexed by the stories they hear from their straight male friends.
My definition of attractiveness includes behavior, and the only unattractive behavior that might put your career at risk is if you ask people out in extremely awkward ways or don't handle rejection well.
Otherwise there should be no career risk to stating interest in getting to know a person more that you find interesting.
Unattractive = somebody who should know I’m way out of their league and since they don’t it’s creepy and slightly embarrassing to me that they’re trying to get a shot
I wonder why I keep seeing couples where one of them is super attractive and the other is the opposite.
Sure, sometimes it's simply prostitution, but many times it's not.
I've also met quite a few very attractive women who've told me that the way a guy looks is not nearly as important to them as their personality... and judging by the guys they've dated, that's true.
Later they stop going to the gym cause they have someone. Their appetite doesn’t change but their exercise routine did. They gain fat.
This is why you see a ton of overweight dudes with women that seem more physically attractive than them. The guys were in shape - they just got fat once they were together because he didn’t need to workout to get the girl anymore.
This is the overwhelming majority of overweight men with thin women that you’ll see.
Same with baldness - etc.
People should look at the couples when they first got together.
There’s nothing less attractive than a guy who—regardless of physical appearance—is unaware of the “nice guy” vibes they are projecting. You do you, but I’d wager if you get off of the internet and talk to some human beings without “trying to get a shot” you’ll be way happier.
The reason that skit is funny and relatable is because it doesn’t take an incel to recognize this nuance of women’s reactions to being approached by two different classes of men.
The problems start when the relationship ends, if it ends badly. Maybe you can take that chance if you know the coworker isn't into gossip/drama/etc and is mature about stuff. But for the love God, why would anyone suggest asking out your new coworker who you don't even know a little bit. Risk piled on more risk...
If I have to resort to this, it implies no one among my peers whom I already see every day because I study or work or live next to them or hang out with their friends etc. is willing to have a relationship with me. (Or they were but then dumped me. Or my standards are idealistic and any real person I know sufficiently well will fall short, guaranteeing a short or dysfunctional relationship for you. Or I am in a relationship and am dishonest to my partner. Most explanations would not be in my favor, except maybe if I lead a solitary life without much social contact and that also begs the question why (unemployed? nomadic? etc.))
I've certainly dated several colleagues, over the years.
OLD works this way:
* There are very few women going on those apps (ratio is about 1 woman for 3 or 5 men). It's by design. OLD apps don't care about the bad reputation of OLD. They could introduce a reputation system to force men to behave, but it's not profitable.
* A woman picks one guy among her matches. She finds one and it works. She doesn't bother answering other guys for obvious reasons (she could be polite but she doesn't want to deal with the reactions of those men)
* The other guys get frustrated, which is good because it incites them to pay for more matches and to land on top of the pile.
Dating apps are a well-oiled scam. It's the worst social media because it preys on users by deceiving and misleading them, by using love as a medium.
I have suggested to automatically remove matches if one user doesn't answer after 10 days. 90% of my matches would go away. It would change everything.
Another suggestion would be to introduce a calendar feature where the dating app can automatically pick a time and safe place for a meet (a public place, usually) depending on your availability. That way, everybody feels safe, it improves the selection process, and you don't circle around in chat conversations, and you only match with people who wants to see you.
It's a bit easy to accuse men of being responsible for the bad reputation of dating apps, but it degrades the women/men ratio, which is obviously the root of the problem. Women cannot properly deal with that ratio (and the whole "biology teaches that uterii are scarce" which is a nature fallacy).
Dating apps solve that problem by making men pay, or by arguing that men are not attractive enough. This also puts oil on the fire of the incel narrative, but it doesn't excuse it.
Source? Also, even if there were 100 men and 100 women, you'd have 80 women interested in 20 most attractive men. A gender imbalance is not the issue. It's not like all men and women are equally attractive to each other.
This is just not true people have so many interests and diverse tastes - male and female - and those outweight sheer looks, even if it were possible to get 80 women to rank 100 men I suspect you'd find that there was no "best 20" that they all agreed on.
Some women like pretty boys, other women like muscular boys, some like fat men, others like nerds and geeks. It's all so variable, and awesome!
Even if you did sheer looks won't matter if the man wants loud techno, and the woman wants loud rock. Some people want drugs, raves, cigarettes. Others want bondage and pain. More likely some want pop music and fancy meals, and others want yoga and vegan food.
Attraction might matter if you're choosing between people with identical lifestyles and tastes. But there are so many things that are more important (smoking, or not, vegan, or carnivore, metal or pop, pop vs. jazz, drugs vs not, vanilla life vs kinky life, etc, etc.)
Taken from Houellebecq novel Whatever. I agree with the general idea, which is also one of the reasons why I think prostitution should be legal.
Most men don’t get any more fulfillment from having empty ONS than women do.
Thuse if you see an attractive man with an unattractive woman -> online dating unattractive man with attractive woman-> real life dating
It’s all <something/somebody else’s> fault.
I've seen the difference at work. And for those 80% the changes OP is suggesting would be good.
If you showed me pictures of 100 women in my dating age range, I think I’d find around 20* of them attractive on average. That was true when I was 20, 30, or now.
* - That might even be a significant over-estimation.
Women were a huge difference. 80% not attractive, 20% or less attractive.
Because if you read past the first and third graphs, which do more-or-less support your position in terms of how they answered "how attractive would you say this person is?", and look into the "how likely was it that you took action to communicate with them?", the selectivity flips quite hard into something that many of us would probably guess: "women's looks matter more to men than men's do to women".
Or perhaps this one, which used eHarmony data: https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/news/new-study-reveals-...
Is what people say when surveyed or what they do when free to act more relevant in dating? I think it's the latter.
If you want to solve the problem of the typical man having matches that go nowhere, then fine, remove the matches that go nowhere, and he can have no matches instead. Also, the Pareto principle for dating apps isn’t just about physical attractiveness, it’s about all of the factors that women discriminate against combined. If you want to make an app that restricts the ability of women to discriminate effectively, then good luck getting women to use it.
Tinder is more of a hookup app anyway. It's a different market/mindset.
It would be a scam if there were not real women there who were actually seeking dates, if the likes were fake bots or something.
If they’re just choosing other candidates that doesn’t make it a scam.
On all the most popular platforms the match algorithms are determining who you get to see. You cannot simply browse all profiles anymore and make a decision for yourself. This alone is enough to put it near scam territory.
There are various paid boosters users can buy to appear over of other matches, making it more of a marketplace than a neutral matching platform.
Plus, there is no incentive for platforms to match people into monogamous long-term relationships. A happy customer is a leaving customer.
I got some bad news for you…
I'm not sure if you are defining what ghosting is properly. It usually means to have established consistent contact (at least a few days) or to have had a live relationship with a person, who then suddenly disappears.
Many dating apps are scams or scams to certain percentages or an extent. Thus they have the app send automated responses or people (often male) working for the company are sending replies to customers to keep them interested and take their money. These automated or company responses were never real women looking to date, just scamming.
It should also be noted that this should include "boost" or increase response gimmicks to take more money from desperate customers (usually male). So basically whatever their male customers were paying meant nothing, so to actually get real/more responses, they must pay more. Which can be paying for a company employee, to send responses to male customers to keep them engaged with the app or site.
> I recently removed 3/4 of my matches because they were not answering after 2 weeks.
On average, people will usually have set up a date to meet before or by 2 weeks. Non-response can mean the person has moved on or met other people, the 2 week mark is not unusual for that to occur. If anything, you should be removing non-responsive contacts after a set period.
> A lot more ghosting...
Actual ghosting has always been a thing with dating apps and sites, to include "one night stands". Because of the huge ratio of men to women on apps/sites, many women can be observed quietly "abusing" apps/sites to run through large number of male customers for "stealth" sexual encounters or for "fun and games" until they think they have hit "Lotto" with a particular guy. The other "throw away males", are the ones who the women ghost on, but because they are male it is considered acceptable or at least not openly discussed.
Where ghosting can become an issue, is when certain men (particularly high demand/high status/good looking males) do it to women. This can lead to various women openly complaining about it. Never mind all the men they may have rejected or ghosted on, but rather its a "crime" for it to have happened to them, and for a lucky/high status/good looking guy appearing to be having too much fun running through many women on an app or site (like the women running through guys). Such women can be so vindictive, to the extent that they will attempt or even accomplish doxing such men, or continually whine about it in public. Despite this happening much more frequently to male users, dealing with women. Many women don't even blink, when it comes to ghosting guys and jumping to the next offer, for whatever excuse.
> ...introduce a calendar feature where the dating app can automatically pick a time and safe place for a meet (a public place, usually) depending on your availability.
You can not force or trap women into dating a guy from an app or site, nor can you use software to remove the fear of rejection. The guy will usually have to face rejection, by asking the women out on a date. She will either accept the offer or not.
What you might can do, is establish rules or a culture where if a person flakes on meeting or is abusing the site to catfish and prank others, then they can more easily get banned from the app or site. When a dating offer is accepted, it is noted by the app/site, and both parties are expected to meet. If a person can't meet, then they can reschedule and are expected to make the rescheduled date, else face a possible ban from the app/site.
However, this is quite hard core, and gives a lot of authority to the app creators or site to get involved. This then can be abused by people that feel they are "owed something", and then constantly whining about it. Like if a woman meets a really rich and handsome guy who she thinks is perfect for her, except he does not feel that way about her. After their first date or sexual encounter, he decides to move on, but she decides to continually complain to the app creators or site as if they can force high status men to love her.
It might be better for people to not rely so heavily on apps/dating sites, particularly to the extent of wanting or trying to force rules on others. Sometimes, just going outside and facing your fear of rejection, and actually speaking to or meeting people can be a helpful option.
It all started with the sudden (obvious, I may be slow) realization that dating apps only have "dating app people" (DAP) on them. This leads to an inherent flaw in dating apps. If all or most of the ideal matches of a person that's on an app are _not_ DAP, well, apps will always be detrimental to that person. Not only will it be impossible to find true matches there, the matches that are found are just a waste of time.
This main problem is accompanied by many other problems -- lack of chemistry judgement, profiles doctored to change the person (naturally), and more.
The solution? A magic wand that when you wave it you start randomly bumping into your ideal matches wherever you go. Barring that solution, we must rely on "selective friends transitivity".
Friends transitivity means that if A and B are friends, and B and C are friends, A and C are also friends. This is surely false. However, I bet it is selectively true. If A and B are friends, both A and B know which of their other friends will be liked by the other.
Which brings us to Eventful. Eventful is an app that allows people to create and be invited to real life events. It then facilitates sharing invites to that events in a way that promotes selective transitivity, and not only in dating. This is true to any kind of gathering where meeting new people is desirable, say weekly basketball neighborhood games. Those people you meet will surely connect you will more people outside of Eventful.
A host can decide "how deep" of an invitee can still invite, all while Eventful makes sure not to overflow the venue, and to let an automatic waitlist know when a place had opened up. This kind of event accounting is impossible to do by hand with something like Instagram or WhatsApp.
I wrote more than I planned, hopefully it was interesting to read.
* Released just a couple days ago, very usable but a little buggy. Update comes up these next couple of days that solves most of them!
Spot on. This self-selection puts me off those.
Person A and Person C have the mutual interest of Person B, so there's a good chance there would be overlap in a Venn diagram.
In all the years I had a profile, I never actually intended to meet anybody. It was a great profile. I told jokes, I admitted things I’d never tell anybody in person. I was simultaneously boastful and shameful. I laid bare my greatest desires and insecurities. It was everything interesting about the person that exists beneath the factual history of my life. I almost never wrote first, and most of the messages, I ignored. Sometimes I had great conversations: funny, shocking, sometimes charming, never with any semblance of topic or direction. The people had fascinating and explorative internal lives. I thought they must be rock stars and startup gods, but they weren’t. They were the same decaying cerebral material as everybody else, living lives of quiet desperation behind the sanitized facade of career and relationship in serial attempts. Kind of like me. No; I’d never match up to that in real life. I can’t imagine the person with that sort of introduction to me, being then forced to watch me sit with my face slung down into my hands listening to somebody tell me what to do, some senseless thing in inane corporate babble through my laptop speakers, and then to hear my plead for rationality, ignored. That’s my real life, and it’s embarrassing. I could never keep somebody’s interest for more than a few weeks. They’ll just end up dissatisfied, longing for more, and feeling guilty about the whole thing. No thanks; I’ve already played this game, many times before with the same outcome. Someday I’ll be ready: rich, dynamic, in charge of my life, leader of men and captain of industry, admired by all. Then it will all work out, right? Staring down into those happy beaming eyes, sparkles on her 20th anniversary dress, children, friends and family cheering for everything we’ve accomplished together. Not right now though, because, you know, things are a little busy, and I should really just focus on the project at work to get it done with, and bonus season is coming up, and theres a lot of things I need to fix about myself. Yeah, definitely not ready.
Standard online dating sometimes works, but in general, it is a meh experience and a waste of time. This because it exploits two mainstream bad incentives: men’s toxic desperateness and women’s narcissistic attention-feeding.
A possible solution would be an app with no chat component whatsoever, strictly just matching for dates in real life - you have to take seriously. Can we compile a list of such apps?
1. Breeze (2022: NL only)
2. ..?
How do you exchange info though? What about an app where people match and they're only alloted a single message (e.g., to exchange contact info, meetup place, etc), after which they cannot chat with the other person anymore?
I don't consider myself too similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, so whenever I see a match there's a small, tiny excitement because maybe that could be the right person for me or at the least there could be some mutual interest. And then, when this Instagram like -> ghosting cycle keeps happening everyday I really feel like shit. And all that depression and low self-esteem are driving me to renew the Tinder premium subscription.
Wow, another business that exploits your deepest insecurities to profit.
At least on OkCupid there are lots of value questions.
Still, one of the problems that I've run in to is that while I've answered thousands of questions, I'll get matched with someone who's only answered (say) 100 questions, and we're supposedly a 96% match.
Most people just don't answer very many questions, so it's hard to gauge compatibility from such a poor sample.
Maybe if they're the right questions.. but when there are thousands or millions of questions to choose from, which three are the right ones?
I'd rather err on the side of having more data to judge compatibility from than less.
Anyway, in my experience the people who answer relatively few questions tend to be the less serious and more flaky types. I'm more interested in serious relationships, so only answering a few questions would be a red flag right there.
However, you make a fair point that people answering only answering a few questions aren't too serious about dating.
They were specifically these three questions:
Do you enjoy horror movies?
Have you traveled alone in a foreign country for fun?
Have you ever wanted to chuck it all and live on a sailboat?
Which predicted long-term compatibility at nearly 4x the rate of coincidence.
Every single issue described in the article has to do with how you use the app.
Talking to 10 guys? Don’t. Focus on one and unmatch if there’s no feeling.
Waiting 1-3 days before meeting? Why. I (male) was recently asked to meet at a nearby mall within 30 minutes of matching.
Dating for many people is more complicated than it needs to me, too many requirements and made-up rules.
The only rules are: be decent and say bye when it doesn’t work.
As a guy, I’ve had my share of bad dates, but nothing quite so bad as expressed to me above. And even I have effectively stopped looking years ago.
So I would say I want it to be as simple as just see where it goes and say no quickly if it’s apparent. But that’s maybe not realistic.
Edit-I would delete that sentence but that seems like something HN frowns on so I’ll leave it as context. It really doesn’t matter much whether someone actually is strong/vulnerable if a predator is going to sneak attack them through any of a means of ways which may even be invisible to them ala toxic whispering.
The problem is in people thinking it’s ok to predate on other people and doing so.
I'm sympathetic to the risks women run, but this isn't necessarily an issue with online dating, but just dating. "Online people" are just people.
The only real difference is that online dating allows you to have as many dates as you can handle, so if you do go on 7 days a week, you could very well have "a bunch of bad dates on Tinder" in just a month.
I think it's the approach people take that is problematic: meeting at a restaurant on a Friday evening and expecting everything (sex on one side and "payment" on the other). I have dates for lunch, coffee and for walks; zero expectations from either party, it works wonderfully and when it doesn't we just go our own merry ways.
Maybe it's different in your area, but for me, over 80% of profiles on Tinder are scammers, Instagram/Onlyfans models fishing for followers, or just straight up fake. Over the past six months I've gone on only a single date from Tinder, whereas with Hinge it is two or three dates per week. The difference honestly blows my mind whenever I think about it.
Hinge is a much better platform, since you can filter out for ie religion. The idea of matching with conservative Christians (or even wasting time looking at them) on tinder is absurd to me - I'm bisexual lol. Those girls do not want to meet me.
I don't know about good, but men whine about this subject non-stop all over social media.
It is like employers interviewing way too many people for a position. Those people are also talking with multiple employees to have a chance to get a job.
So a reach out in the end have a high probability of a no. Especially if you are slow.
Also the 3 employers who interview the same 10 people will probably want the same one employee anyway, simplified. So two employees will get a cold hand and feel they "can't find good candidates". Same with dating. Many are overreaching.
This is very different (if not the opposite) from what the average person often knows or thinks, where many think sexually adventurous women like to or want to openly advertise. That's usually incorrect. Those women being so flamboyant, openly advertising, or even being aggressive are often trying to sell something or make sales quotas. Unfortunately, many guys get pulled into the trick.
Additionally, when Tinder was new, it arguably positioned itself as the heterosexual version of Grindr. The culture was different. Thus lots of encounters would happen.
Then came the complaints, whining, moral grandstanding, etc... Tinder succumbed to the pressure and pulled a kind of bait and switch. They started to confirm profiles, track, and make profiles publicly accessible to be linked to. The combination scared a lot of "out for fun" women off, because clearly they don't want people sending their profile everywhere or being so easily identifiable on the internet. Tinder tried to be more Facebook-like than Grindr-like, and way more about pulling as much money from male customers than being concerned about people actually meeting up.
When Tinder changed and the culture attached to it, then came even more scammers, pranksters, catfish, and attention-seekers. The ratio of who is really with it and who is not changed. With the changes, also comes more of the usual dating site games and "cover stories" (to protect their reputation and profile), like having to pretend to be "good" and looking for "true love only" or the mindset of only doing it for the business (like OnlyFans or almost/actual prostitution). This all usually comes at the expense or the abuse of male users.
1. Introduce a new system (Uber) whose premium form is better but more expensive than the old (taxis) 2. Subsidize its operation with unlimited funding 3. People become behaviorally locked into the new system and the old one dies 4. Remove the subsidy 5. The new system degrades into an unhappy medium of mediocre performance at high cost, but the old system no longer exists as an alternative
Dating apps are not "subsidized" in the same sense, but exhibit a similar trajectory. They work well when small and badly when dominant, but by the time we realize the problems at scale, the previous behavioral models (friend-of-friend introductions, work relationships, in-person approaches) are no longer viable and may not even be considered acceptable.
What do we call this pattern?
Time to delete and move on
Also, men have it beat in them by now that approaching women in public is seen as creepy and now all of a sudden we want them to start doing it? There is no magical answer, everyone should try different things and see what works for them.
We, the writers for The Guardian, never think of meeting anyone when we're out.
Essentially instead of having a dating environment centered around activities, we're all forced to just chat and hope for the best.
There's many reasons for this, probably the most simple is that I'd it were efficient it wouldn't be popular. Knowing that you know it won't work, but not really why...
Perhaps the articles right and the way is the lack of committment/loyalty?
I think a big aspect of it was that before tinder finding people who were in a eating mindset was bloody rare.
I dated people purely because I didn't know anyone else single.
You dated all your friends in the end because it was so hard to find others. Not necessarily shagged them.
That did two things, firstly it made people pragmatic and consider dating more types of people. And it got people used to compromise and sticking it out that's vital for a relationship to work.
Tinderisation of okcupid was such a shame.
Flakey? Yeah, I see a lot of that in real life too. Many times this has to do with how busy everyone seems these days.
Talking to 10 different potential dates? That's on you. Figure out what you want and prioritize. Have some patience.
Upset when people when people turn you down or ghost? Guess what, that happens in real life too. You're going to see a lot more rejection up close and personal if you're asking in real life too. It sucks, but maybe grow some thicker skin.
But really, she looks above average, white, successful writer, what's the problem really?
The problem is finding people you're compatible with.. which is a problem for anyone, no matter how white or "successful" they are.
Sometimes there is no 'problem', per se.
> Only problem with irl is that the demographics are weird.
How so?
However, if I were to download a dating app, I’d see plenty of people in my area around my age.
If so, it could be due to things like this:
https://tech.okcupid.com/evaluating-perceptual-image-hashes-...
Match Group owns OkCupid, Hinge, Tinder and so on.. so wouldn’t be surprising if they all used the same or similar algorithms for spam prevention and noob boost abuse.
They probably also collect other data like your phone number, deviceID, etc.
This is bad because if you ever delete your profile and remake it then your internal ranking could plummet due to these aggressive spam filters.
Upon signing up, it was showing me mostly profiles I might be interested in opening conversations with. After a week or so, it started presenting exclusively profiles with the lowest "attractiveness" score you can imagine, or whatever they're calling it on their back end. A collection or morbidly obese people with absolutely no thought given on how they present themselves to the world.
I then deleted my account and went back out of curiosity a few months later, only to see exactly the same scenario. Same phone, same number, same pictures on my profile: I probably evaded the perceptual hashes thanks to the fact I came back long enough after the first deletion and was granted a new week of normalcy.
Bumble specifies when you delete your account that it "might" affect your experience if you do this and sign up again. At least they're a bit honest about it.
No matter what, there's a lot going on behind the curtain. People are grouped into cohorts. I've experimented with friends of the opposite gender and we were wondering why we'd never bumped into each other. No matter how narrowed down our filtering was, our profiles would never be shown to each other.
And a funny anecdote: a few months ago, Instagram started pitching ads about very high end, luxury items, probably thinking I had hit a jackpot or something. Simultaneously, I was thrown into a new cohort on dating apps. As if I was now eligible to a whole new level on the social ladder.
Maybe you can game this by googling stereotypical rich person questions and browsing luxury goods, then watch as you start getting better matches.
> When you meet someone through an app you have no loyalty to that person, they don’t know your friends, they don’t work with you, so it’s all too easy for them to not follow up on promises.”
What promises? What promise can make me call a girl if I don’t like her? And what promise can stop me from calling a girl if I’m attracted to her.
>Amy’s right, apps have moved dating from the public into the private sphere and in doing so they have removed any accountability.
Isn’t it backwards? Public scrutiny reduces dates. “She’s older than you! But she’s only 17… She’s too tall. She’s too short. You took them both on the same date?? how was it?”.
My dates are my private business. Friends and family have no say in that. If they try to say something- I’ll leave the room. And so nobody prevents me from dating whom I’m attracted to. Accountability? it reduces dates, no?
>Now we connect with people when we’re shut away at home, under duvets, behind closed doors, which makes it so much easier to behave badly.
One behaves badly when no one sees him?? Well, tbh I sometimes do. But you can’t behave badly towards an attractive girl. It’s both impossible and counterproductive.
Guys in Russia have created a yelp for sex workers.
(My first wife. At the moment the age of consent in Russia was 14).
Thankfully I stuck with it for a bit, since me and my partner for some years now got randomly matched by the system (neither one of us remembered having seen or swiped yes on the other). She was using a Windows phone and the 3rd party Timber app, so not sure if that had anything to do with it.
At one point, 4 years later we played around with polyamory and used Tinder for it, and quickly both of us became fatigued with the amount of conversations and attention needed to use it.
I can only imagine it has become worse since.