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Comment by ldjkfkdsjnv | Hacker News Reader

Will probably get downvoted for this. But I'm a very conventionally attractive guy with a good job in a major US city. I basically have an unlimited stream of dates through dating apps from women of all walks of life. Upwards of 20 - 50 matches a day if I really push it. People already know this, but I dont think they know how bad the schew is. Every young single woman is chasing the same few men and they dont care if that guy is dating other women.

As these women enter their 30s I really dont know what is going to happen. Society will be an odd place in twenty years. The social dynamics between men and women have never existed like this.

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I used to get laid a lot from Tinder because I figured out how to game the system. But at some point I realized I didn't actually like the people I was scoring with; yeah maybe they were attractive and we had some basic things in common. But I didn't really want to hang out with them or talk to them.

Eventually I realized I was just trying to get laid, or seem appealing/attractive. When I looked at what I was doing, what I was changing about myself, just to get laid, I realized that wasn't the authentic me.

So I changed my profile and put the authentic me, and just a couple random pictures I'd taken recently. Or sometimes just a joke profile that I find funny. Now I get maybe one match a month. When we do match I'm not interested. And that's fine. I'm older now, and have zero interest in sex with someone who I don't like as a person first. And it turns out I'm a picky bastard, and kind of weird, and there's just not a lot of people who find that attractive.

..... on Tinder, anyway. If I go to meatspace and socialize, in the right places, I find the people I really like, and that like me. It turns out that I'm not actually awful; Tinder is.

I’m picky too mate. I studied psychology just to crack dating. There’s a method to my madness. My point: put 500 dedicated hours to it (coached) and you’ll be able to find a good match. At least, that’s my experience.

My biggest tip: read up on assorted mating theory and ask yourself what your biggest personality traits are. Communicate those traits.

In my case: imagination and curiosity. I communicate my imagination immediately by going off imaginary tangents. Most people can’t handle it when a horde of take over the conversation and teach calculus to you. Who wouldn’t want to learn calculus from a a capable puppy? :D Some say “haha” to that but magic happens when she chimes in and says “and it’s so cute when they involuntarily bark during their lecture”

Anyway, that’s an example of a tangent and how a positive response to it looks like. I screen hard and make sure I get insane amounts of volume.

If you think my level of thinking is intense, it’s only the tip of the iceberg :)

But my point is: it’s possible, while being yourself, albeit in a strategic way

That sounds really exhausting...

I got tons of matches on Tinder, quite a lot of dates and hook ups, and relationships. I'm passably attractive but nothing much, just above average. I wrote something a little funny in my bio, put up pictures that aren't: in the gym, fishing, driving a car, smiling while standing at some random place, hiking. What I had was pictures of me having fun, not "expected fun" but where I really enjoyed myself, some extremely silly. And a portrait so people could know exactly what I looked like.

I found two long-time partners and a lot of very fun and interesting dates.

I think it worked because I was just genuine and honestly meeting people who I had a conversation that clicked. Don't think I could ever overthink this that much...

> When I looked at what I was doing, what I was changing about myself, just to get laid, I realized that wasn't the authentic me.

I can relate. I changed myself to become more conventionally attractive, got a lot of attention, got into a relationship with a beatiful woman who, once she found out who I was, didn’t like it all that much. Made me realise how important it is to be very evident about your personality and not try to be someone likeable.

It is pretty simple. Either they will be single forever or find a sucker to marry them.

These women are unrealistic. As they get older their requirements for a man go up instead of going down. They think a man with wealth and options is going to choose them instead of a younger woman. It is pretty sad really.

> their requirements

Bingo. That's the sad reality unfortunately. Everyone wants a prince charming but at the end of the day men are busy and would rather live alone than be involved in drama

Unfortunately, but its a bit deeper than that basic characterization allows.

There are a lot of confounding factors, from the lack of actual role models, subversive propaganda, poor parenting, and the effects of education, to the debt saddled on you at a time in your life where you are especially vulnerable as you become independent.

There was an interesting set of statistics out of Scandinavia, I think it was, that seemed to suggest that women with high levels of education rarely selected mates who were not at least as educated as they were. Women generally as a cohort don't date down.

Some common things that often get ignored are:

If women don't have babies by 35, risk of complications and death go up drastically.

If men or women aren't debt free with a down payment for a house by 30, they often won't get married (because of the debt), or if they do, they won't have children.

The issue is a societal one where commonplace norms weren't propagated for the most part by the boomer generation and the survivors who have been tied down in red tape unable to move are the people left to pick up the pieces.

That of course assumes someone at the top chooses not to end everything in a glorious final confrontation by escalating existential threats. Not good times.

I completely agree with this if you're just talking about dating apps. When you give everyone the ability to look at every attractive person in their area, it changes people's perspective of what's attractive/not. Also, people are almost solely rated on how attractive they are and 100 words to describe yourself (sometimes less depending on the app), you get a situation where the attractive people get tons of matches and less attractive people get fewer even if they have more to offer than just their looks. Finally, women seem to rate attractiveness on a long tail distribution. It's a nightmare all around.

What's funny to me though is how different the IRL dating scene is. I got 1-2 matches a week (very few where I would get a response back) when I was on the apps, but through meeting friends-of-friends, casually going to a bar, meeting people at church, or other normal events, I can consistently get dates that would be out of my league on the apps just by introducing myself. I don't have stats for "epic bed partners" since that's not something I'm interested in, but I'm sure it would translate for those that are.

I find that people in my age group (early 20s) are moving from app dating to irl because apps can seem hopeless unless you really optimize which seems unauthentic. I think there's going to be a generation who will have trouble finding partners, like you said, but I feel like my generation and the folks younger than me will be alright.

Edit: I also want to point out that it's pretty bad in tech where people are constantly moving (I know a guy who moved once a year between SF, Seattle, Denver, NY, and Charlotte) to new cities all the time and can't create good, deep friendships. First, if you're dating irl, it's tough meeting people who can introduce you to single women. Second, it's hard to be a good date if you don't have friends. I don't even want to explain that, but it should be obvious.

There's an old joke -- or perhaps humorous observation -- that men want to be the first person a woman sleeps with and women want to be the last person a man sleeps with.

Men tend to be looking for sex. Women tend to be looking for long-term relationships. Another similar observation: Men give love to get sex, women give sex to get love.

I'm struggling to think of less accurate generalizations. Maybe that's the line that the old guard is trying to sell to society, but it is not being bought by new generations.

The dating -- or hookup -- scene seems to have changed a lot for younger people. I'm not young, but my primary point was that even in older, more conservative times there was some recognition of the fact that male and female strategies differ and women aren't typically looking for someone pure and untouched.

I've seen multiple comments here by men who seem surprised or something that women often don't care that they are seeing others. And I'm trying to say "It's really not that surprising and if you think about it for a minute, it's a well-known and long-standing pattern, really."

I actually think its the complete opposite. Alot of nice looking well kept women just want sex

You are dreaming.

Or it just starts out that way. ;)

Biologically that makes no sense.

Having sex as a male basically has no consequences. Having sex as a woman can have huge consequences. Therefore, biologically the parent poster is correct.

Humans do not act on biological impulses and instincts alone, that's why your train of thought is not much aligned with reality.

Women rationally know that contraception pills exist and are effective, meaning the choice of getting pregnant is in their hands; (promiscuous) sex apparently has no consequences. This informs their actions.

That might be true. But at least what you describe is not my experience. All women I know want serious relationships, not one-night stands (Belgium). Maybe in your part of the world or generation that is different.

It does: women has always has dual mating strategy (find a sexy partner to have a baby with and a sucker who will take care of the baby...if she's lucky it's the same person, but quite often that's not the biologically optimal behavior).

But they will not admit to that, that's why thread neighbour amir734jj has his confused opinion.

Women will almost always express their desire to ride the carousel obscured with virtue signal wording such as "finding myself", "enjoying my freedom/the party scene", and the like.

Love is the wrong word, it's unfortunately massively overloaded and culturally dependent to such an extent that there is very little chance of transporting meaning and understanding with it. I want to replace it with more accurate phrasing, rooted in human psychology.

A man gives commitment to get sex.

A woman gives sex to attain being provided for and protected.

I’m a 6 out of 10 at best in looks (aka average). I got 1 match per month. By hacking Tinder (took 50 to 100 hours to figure it out what works for me), I got 100 to 150 matches per month. Sure, you could have an even crazier dating life than I would have, but I am super happy with this and might have found a GF through it (too early to tell but one might have that potential). It took 6 months. Over the past 10 years I have been single for 10 months in total (3 long-term relationships).

So yes, again, that’s a far cry from what you get, but I have about one epic romantic encounter per three months and could have sex once per month by women I’d find attractive. So 33% of my bed partners are experienced as epic.

So yea, this is what happens when you don’t accept your fate and rebel against it: a dating life that I am happy with.

Conventional attractive guys have it way easier than I do, I am forced to build character by taking charge of my dating life and hacking it. That’s a fine trade-off by me. It’s also a forced trade-off, c’est la vie.

The real tough part was age 17 to 21. It took 4 years of active social skills improvement and self-improvement to lose my virginity to a woman that I would find attractive. For the first 3 years I wasn’t even able to kiss a girl. I was in the category: get laid or die trying (dramatizing here: I mean find a GF that I am happy with and she with me, the die trying part is accurate). I should have been an incel, really. But I refused and after 3 years enough clicked to make the topic of dating workable. It was very hard, but I came from the difficulty level called: it’s impossible. So very hard mode was an easy mode for me by that time

Anyone feeling stuck, feel free to email (in my profile). I don’t check it often but I know the pain and if I can help, I will

I thought I was a fairly attractive guy. I’ve had interest from attractive women in the past. On dating apps though? Crickets. I’ve had several friends vet my profile (who were quite brutal with their feedback, too) but I still only average around 1 match per week.

If I’m supposed to be a somewhat attractive guy, I can imagine the vast majority of men must be getting no interest at all.

I think the poster above you seems to have factors related to their appeal that they aren't considering and thus are improperly generalizing their experience.

E.g. they have finely tuned tinder game. That doesn't in any way support the idea that women are only attracted to a small subset of men. That's an idea taken literally from the incel crowd.

> That doesn't in any way support the idea that women are only attracted to a small subset of men. That's an idea taken literally from the incel crowd.

Well, to be fair, that’s not exactly what I was saying. Despite replying to that poster, I was half echoing Scott Galloway’s comment that on dating apps the top 20% of attractive men get 60% of the interest. I didn’t check his sources, but it doesn’t seem like an unrealistic assertion to me, or a belief that only someone with a twisted world view might have, as you seem to be implying.

> I’ve had several friends vet my profile

Female or male friends?

Two female, two male.

> I thought I was a fairly attractive guy.

By sheer statistical chance alone, you are a normie (middle of the bell curve, where most people are) and overrate yourself.

> I’ve had several friends vet my profile

Seek out an unbiased attractiveness rating done by people who actually know the science, for example ratebywaffles. I bet that your friends received no training or sought to read the relevant sociology and psychology papers, so can't have more than a gut feeling and are basically clueless/misinformed about what the actual criteria are.

You may very well be right. I can really only go off what others tell me, and whether attractive women found me attractive in the past (although I suppose there could have been other contributing factors).

I hadn’t heard of ratebywaffles. I might try it out. I’m sure it will be a hit to the self esteem, but it seems like it would ultimately be a good thing if it means developing a more accurate picture of myself.

How tall are you?

I'm 6'1" (and white). Pussy still doesn't just fall into my lap. You're either a """manlet""" or 6'+ and intimidating. Fucked either way.

What they do is lie about their age and keep trying. I’ve went on a few dates where women were clearly 10 years older than stated and pictured in the dating app.

I think the focus is on men due to the concern of the collateral damage of incel violence and it ignores the individual plights of the men and women. If women were similarly violent maybe more people would notice their problems too. Instead they just get some cats and quietly disappear.

> As these women enter their 30s I really dont know what is going to happen. Society will be an odd place in twenty years. The social dynamics between men and women have never existed like this.

Be a bro and refer a couple to a less attractive friend? Tell her it'll make you happy as an incentive.

That way you can be the living representation of her disappointment in life? It would be hard for me to imagine a hotter hell.

Otherwise she'll die alone, along with his ugly friend.

If a woman has made it to late 30s without reframing her perspective she is unlikely savable and anyone who tries will be punished for it by her ad infinitum.

Because dating these days is about being photogenic and being in scenic places...

People who are on the Internet a lot, and people who look good on dating apps are really invested in social media, and that means finding a partner who works well with that.

Dating apps are also heavily paywalled. Communication is not facilitated at all by dating apps... It's a pretty grim future for meaningful matching to be honest. I get dates as well, but hate the feeling of meeting through an app because it feels like a revolving door of Internet faces, not like a great way to make trustworthy partners.

> The social dynamics between men and women have never existed like this.

Not so, polygyny actually is the natural dynamic for the animal genus homo. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34538418

The age of enforced monogamy, which now has come to an end, lasted only a few thousand years, which is nothing compared to for how long we have already existed. What you think of normal is actually the anomaly.

I agree with the gist of the video that deliberate effort is required to engineer society in a direction where most men have a stake worth living for, not just the top 20%.

>Every young single woman is chasing the same few men and they dont care if that guy is dating other women.

Highly relevant: /u/avocados44 recalls the college sex life of Jimmy Garoppolo, current 49ers QB https://np.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/dpz1mh/highlight_jimmy_...>

Cap. So he's haughty enough to be a professional athlete but humble enough to not brag about his bodycount?

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