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> Online dating is just manifest of what happens in real life.

Absolutely not. If you're looking for a partner in real life, you're working with a small, finite "dating pool" and you calibrate your expectations reasonably. In your office, there might be twenty women you like, five of them may be interested in you. Both sides go through a straightforward process to make up their minds, and that's it. Stuff like the 80% / 20% theory ultimately doesn't matter, because in that small cohort with no gender imbalances, almost every person naturally finds a mate - just not always their first pick.

In contrast, in online dating, you don't have an estimate of the dating pool, and it appears essentially infinite. This encourages two behaviors. First, you're spending very little time on individual profiles, often just swiping left or right in a matter of seconds - so individual decisions are made with much less fidelity. Second, it makes it really hard for both sides to calibrate expectations and to stop looking when they find a match that's good enough. If your date seems to like model trains a bit too much or needs to lose 20 pounds, there is a temptation to keep looking instead of trying to work with that.

In the end, if you go through thousands of profiles, then (a) the results probably won't be any better than with a smaller pool (see: the secretary problem); (b) you will be a lot more miserable for much longer; and (c) the purported "80% / 20%" split actually starts to matter a lot.

There is at least one app I can think of which works by giving you a finite amount of profiles to review every day.

I did find that it was a bit better in several aspects.

Which app is that? “Once” used to do that but now it appears to have been sold to another company and lost that capability.

Coffee meets Bagel

But also the people you meet are also looking at a "finite pool".

Whereas on dating apps people will be speaking to many others and so it's much harder to find a long-term relationship.

I think a better solution would be letting people freely talk to eachother by communities / interests. But that is harder to monetise.

And you still have the fundamental issue that there are far more men than women.

> In your office, there might be twenty women you like, five of them may be interested in you.

Look at Mr. Popularity here.

Suggesting that 25% of people are compatible with each other is pretty reasonable.

That is actually a really high rate.

In my experience, with modern young people even incredibly slight differences is enough to ruin that compatibility. I'm talking the shoes you wear, maybe that one time you ate at your desk, etc.

It's a mindset thing. People start from a place where nobody is worthy, and then actively only notice/seek things that make them more unworthy. As in, people only notice the bad stuff, never the good stuff. You can have 99 points of compatibility but that 1 you're incompatible on tips it over - because you're only looking at that 1, the 99 are invisible.

Young people feel they are not in a hurry, and a lot of self-esteem and confidence issues (especially now that their life is by-default semi-public on Instagram/etc.)

This pushes them toward casual things much more, and away from commitments (especially in places where it can complicate things, like at work). So only those couples get together at work that already have a very high "cohesion".

This is not really true either though.

If you go to the grocery store or any place with many people you could do the same thing as online.

What is interesting is the sociology of how guys will swipe right basically everyone online and basically no one in person even though the rejection % is going to be astronomically higher online. Rejection online even tends to be more rude. Getting rejected in person is almost always very polite.

What is even more interesting is how there hasn't been an overall adjustment in behavior when swiping right in person is so much more valuable because of the lack of people doing it.

Assume attractiveness = intelligence, money, personality, physical

Here's what will happen between men and women of different attractiveness levels (based on my experience and observations):

1. Man (same level of attractiveness) + woman (same level of attractiveness) = potential relationship

2. Man (higher) + woman (lower) = casual sex, situationships

3. Man (lower) + woman (higher) = friendzone, man does stuff for woman without sex

Of course there are outliers. But these are the most likely outcomes.

In physics, there is a concept of the lowest energy state. For example, a ball at the top of the hill wants to release all the energy and rest at the bottom of the hill.

The lowest energy state for a women is #3. The lowest energy state for a man is #2. In other words, a man naturally wants a ton of casual sex, if he can. A woman naturally wants a lot of attention, protection, resources, if she can.

A very attractive man will get a lot of #2. A very attractive woman will get a lot of #3.

On dating apps (and in real life), woman want either #1 or #3 in outcome. Men want either #1 or #2 in outcome.

Eventually, most will settle into #1 after learning where their personal attractiveness level is.

> My female friend once experimented by putting up a picture of a shoe as her only dating profile. She still received many likes - some of them paid Super Likes.

Well, obviously. Every guy wants a woman who's got some depth to her sole.

> Online dating is just manifest of what happens in real life.

Really, no. The paradox of choice is one of the biggest problems with online dating, one of the reasons why it never worked for me, and one of the reasons why it never worked for many people I know. It works for some, that's fine, and it's probably useful in semi-rural areas where meeting people is hard.

> The top 20% most attractive men get 80% of the likes

It's specifically this notion of "top 20%" that is flawed. While online dating is about searching for the "best match", real life is about committing to a person who you seem to get along with, embracing the unknown, and working on it together to make each other the best match for each other. If that work goes well, you end up being the best match for each other, and you don't regret not having swiped 500 more times in search of better.

disclaimer: never online dated.

I am not sure you're disagreeing with grandparent, it seems to me the what they're talking about is about getting that first date, while you're talking about establishing a relation past that.

> The top 20% most attractive men get 80% of the likes.

I have seen few experiments and it's even more unbalanced, in the order of top 2/3% getting 97% of the likes.

I don't think there is much to fix about online dating anyway personally, there are many different platforms with different focuses and it has worked for lots of people.

This is not the whole story. Even though everyone (both male and female) can identify the most attractive top 5% of the other sex, there is sufficient randomness in the preferences that matches are possible and sufficient (more work for males certainly). This absolutely makes sense biologically/evolutionary because everyone needs to find a mate somehow.

> evolutionary because everyone needs to find a mate somehow.

I don’t see this as evolutionary necessity.

Theoretically alpha male could father all the children.

Up to a degree.

You would need a group of alpha males to guarantee genetic diversity for future generations, or your little society will start having issues with inbreeding and maybe get killed by a rival tribe.

It's hard to say whether that would yield better results over monogamy after several generations. I wonder if this is an experiment evolution already tried over million of years or if it's a novel approach. Prehistoric men being of similar strength and not having tools would make it hard for an elite to get all women without rebellion. Nowadays, with a population which is mostly unarmed, it would be easier.

The thing that arguably makes it easiest now is welfare.

A woman can have children with as many different men as she likes (or your hypothetical alpha with no allegiance to her) and then use an army of state enforcers to secure a 20% income stream from each one after the relationship dissolves. If the enforcers can't get him to pay, no matter, IRS men with machine guns are sent to collect from everyone.

There's very little incentive compared to say 100 years ago to stay with your partner as a female, with divorce being initiated far more by women who can use this strategy.

Secure genetic material from only the top %, but pay for the uprising by taxing the entire population.

Are you referring to the entirely debunked theory that human social lives resemble those of wolves in captivity, which is now resonating in incel circles, and that even the original author has been trying to correct for decades?

Unless you meant alpha male as in furries, in which case furries fathering all the children is an interesting point of view.

26% children are already living in single parent households, so we're well on the way :)

Bad for genetic diversity.

Is it? There are plenty of examples in animal kingdom, which should prove, it is not unsurmountable problem.

Theoretically the goal is to pass on the best set of genes.

> This absolutely makes sense biologically/evolutionary because everyone needs to find a mate somehow.

Also because predicting the most favored traits one or two generations down the line is difficult. Biologically you want as much genetic diversity as possible to ensure at least some have the right traits to survive the next cataclysmic event.

As a contrived example, if every man only went for women with big breasts that would be a real issue of a couple generations later swimming speed became important for survival

Having even an ounce of confidence and being willing to talk to people is dating on easy mode.

Online dating makes sense, logically. Absolutely nothing against it - I met my wife on FB of all places.

But in my dating days, I'd met more than one person who was using an app and ghosted a date because I asked them to do something, in person.

If you're tired of getting swiped the wrong way, just do it the old fashioned way.

> My female friend once experimented by putting up a picture of a shoe as her only dating profile.

this test probably wasn't valid due to the prevalence of foot fetishists. It might be hard to find an object that no one fetishists but one could pick something that isn't related to a common fetish.

Lots of men seem to be in denial about what makes those 20% of men more attractive. It's mostly that they put in some amount of effort. Most women are only giving likes to men who write interesting things in their profiles and have put effort into grooming themselves and presenting themselves well in their photographs - ie men who seem likely to reciprocate when a woman invests effort into a relationship.

Since likes are virtually limitless, it allows the possibility to deceive. Most women on these apps have experienced matching with someone and then realizing he hasn't even read her profile. Many men don't even seem ashamed of deceiving women like this. Women don't want to be used or cheated on, and so many men are signaling that they will do so by starting off with lying to multiple women that they are interested. So of course women know that most likes are actually lies, and so women are very carefully looking for signs that a man isn't playing the field. The men who succeed are those who have profiles that manage to convince women that they will only express interest when it is honest and genuine.

> Lots of men seem to be in denial about what makes those 20% of men more attractive. It's mostly that they put in some amount of effort. Most women are only giving likes to men who write interesting things in their profiles and have put effort into grooming themselves and presenting themselves well in their photographs - ie men who seem likely to reciprocate when a woman invests effort into a relationship.

It is almost impossible to fake your personality. The moment you meet person IRL it will become obvious that the fake Mr. Interesting life was created just to get chicks online. Those 20% are interesting, because they’re genuinely interesting IRL, not because “they’ve put effort into their online persona”.

> It's mostly that they put in some amount of effort.

I don't understand why so many people think that those who struggle to date must be not putting effort. Do you really think that in real life effort equals success?

Just world fallacy.

Nearly everyone in this sphere of life is victim to such a fallacy. I know many men who put in high effort and are not rewarded. Meanwhile I’ve seen men who actively sabotage and have women throwing themselves at them.

The world is not fair. It’s so obvious with wealth - why can’t it be obvious with dating?

> The top 20% most attractive men get 80% of the likes

I don't like how that (decade?-)old OkCupid's blog post's conclusions keeps being thrown out over and over like it is fact and had reliable methodology that makes those findings generalizable. (Assuming that I am right in identifying that statement's provenance.)

I don't think anyone should base their dating strategy, or what it means to date and be in the dating market for them over that conclusion, and should actually come to their own conclusions based on their own experience, even if it might be as dismal as that finding.

I think this clearly shows the shortcomings of modern scientific method: everyone knows X is true, but admitting this would have serious implications to how we've organized the society, so... we just don't.

Isn't ignoring the results of a careful quantified experiment the opposite of scientific thinking?

Sure it might be secular but it's not scientific.

>Online dating is just manifest of what happens in real life

idk. What you are describing here is a pretty specific dynamic created by a specific environment.

I mean.. some things will carry into other contexts but the "game theory" only plays out in an efficient, legible, high velocity context.

When I was in college, most casual hookups started drunkenly at dance bars. Looks played, for sure. But... The guys that shagged for medals were generally the most outgoing guys... the ones that made the most moves.

I might have tried hitting on a random girl once or twice per year. My housemate tried 10 times per week... or more.

Being a man in 2024 is a rather pathetic experience honestly. You constantly feel like a beggar in the dating market. How can you build self-esteem with that? No wonder so many men simply check out.

You mean being an unattractive man in 2024? It’s probably just as pathetic as it was in 1024. Attractive ones are doing fine, as usual.

I'm average looking, and I've dated and "been" with many women. I'm not even tall (I'm relatively short, in fact, shorter than some women I've been with), nor rich. I should have terrible self esteem, but I don't. That, plus being social and kind to others (and maybe a bit funny) really helps. A lot more than looks alone or money.

Posts like the OP are just incels pushing an agenda.

No, I didn't mean that. I meant being a normal man. Average = unnatractive to women in 2024. Just the way it is.

There is no "dating market". Homo sapiens is a monogamous and patriarchal species. We have the technology to ignore this fact now, but any such attempt is fundamentally working against human biology.

20% of the men are not dating 80% of the women. If you honestly believe this nonsense, you need to stop watching Manosphere videos on the internet and go find a local community in real life.