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Comment by yibg | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if that's true. From most data I've seen women's preferences skew towards a small percentage of men. i.e. most women want the same guys, which are the small minority. This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.

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>This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.

Well... kind of. Except that men also tend to all be looking at the same pool of younger women, while women tend to look for men closer to their own age, according to OKCupid's data.

https://www.businessinsider.com/dataclysm-shows-men-are-attr...

There is a big difference between what they see as "the best" and what they are looking at. If a 42 yo man sees a good looking 30 year old on a dating app he is quite unlikely to disregard her simply because she is not 20.

I think major difference being men will still message or go out with women they don't think are super attractive (but are ok), where as women won't.

I wonder about the actual numbers here, and how they vary between cultures, regions, age groups, etc. From what I see from my single female friends 20% is waaay too high. Not trying to be a jerk here, just observation.

Yea perhaps. It may very well be top 10% or 5%. But point is, it's a small minority.

That may be the case in theory but it doesnt play out that way in the real world as you can tell from marriage statistics.

Yes good to clarify, this applies to the "dating" phase. I assume (hope) once in a stable long term relationship, it's more 1:1.

What women "want" (who they start conversations with) on dating apps isn't super relevant; that just means you have to message them first.

IIRC the OKCupid data showed that women rated most men poorly, but then still responded to their messages, so, like, it didn't matter.

Surely that would mean 60% of women (assuming equal gender balance in the population) are perpetually single? That doesn’t sound right to me.

It just means that 1 man in that top 20% (or whatever the actual number is) is dating / bedding 4 women.

You don't need to learn attractiveness from that man, you need to learn time and relationship management.

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