Some men tend to jump straight to innuendoes: dating app users on why they quit | Hacker News Reader

Some men tend to jump straight to innuendoes: dating app users on why they quit

theguardian.com

23 pointsrustoo41 comments

I know that they have male and female accounts in the article, but it's hard to overstate just how bad the experience is from a male's point of view. And this is coming from somebody who gets regular matches & dates (just trying to provide context...).

So yea, it's terrible you get instant sex talk. But a lot of the complaints & negative experiences in the article go both ways.

> it's terrible you get instant sex talk.

Is it, though? It seems a useful signal that helps to separate out the people who are looking just to hook up from the people looking to actually date.

at least demonstrates some degree of impulse control.

I suspect the problem is the ones they would like to date are the ones able to get away with only looking for sex.

Talk to women in real life. It's not that hard.

While I agree it's a superior strategy, it really is hard to start off. Many of us get over it in middle school, but some do not and it snowballs into deeper anxiety each time we put it off.

I have figured out the secret for me is to remind myself "If I try to talk to her we might have a great outcome, and I'll feel better even if rejected because I know I tried. But if I dont talk to her I will have a long time of rumination and regret about what might have been."

This is a type of regret minimization and I think it’s a good way to look at making a lot of decisions in life. (The sharpest memory I have of this in a dating context is a time when I used it, got shot down hard and both 5 days and now 20 years later I’m still glad I did it.)

It's very hard to flirt effectively for many men, especially if the interaction with the woman is not within the context of a date / singles bar / dating app etc where its expected. It really is an art and takes experience or intuition that many men lack.

Many of those "many men" would significantly improve their chances by just doing gym 2 times a week for more than a year.

And by just starting to think a little bit about their look, that's it.

Those two simple things would increase their chances significantly.

I would suggest just start talking to them about stuff. Not every interaction has to be flirting.

The vast majority of women in real life are not looking for a partner.

It's not hard if you can find them. I talk to a lot of women in real life, but ultimately 99% fall into these 3 categories:

1. Already married there with their partner

2. Not looking to date seriously for one reason or another (usually senior age, or too young/exploring things, etc.)

3. Ones that just don't like being approached in public space (e.g. they'll say something like "I have a boyfriend" and end the interaction)

I honestly don't know where to talk to dating-age women in my area who don't fall into these categories. But I'm reluctant to use apps too.

I'm just trying to provide a balanced take on the article my man.

> just how bad the experience is from a male's point of view

How so?

Oh okay, I didn't realize this article was getting revived from several days ago.

being flaky, matching but never messaging, getting ghosted, "not knowing what he wants" - these are things that are brought up in the article from women and apply towards women as well.

The thing with apps is that some/most women can instantly fill up their profiles with matches, which is to say that they'll quickly get flooded with guys trying to talk to them. That's the way it works. I'm just trying to explain the dynamic. But having all of these options at your fingertips really diminishes interactions. I think that's the uniquely guy problem.

"I know that they have male and female accounts in the article, but it's hard to overstate just how bad the experience is from a male's point of view."

They only have one example from a man, and it's only focused on gender neutral topics of looks and ethnicity.

I met people on OK Cupid and match.com way back when before I met my partner - 15-20 years ago - and I know a guy who met his eventual wife on plenty of fish.

OK Cupid had a lot of potential as an idea but required a lot of investment up front. The traditional profile apps seemed to be full of people gaming and I sensed that a lot of the profiles I was looking at as a straight man of straight women were fake.

When I heard about the swiping apps, I thought "well that keeps it simpler I guess" - the anti-OK Cupid - but also felt it would mean that the things that actually make chemistry work beneath the surface would be completely absent.

In the article, there is mention of somebody finding a click with somebody who was setup as "a friend of a friend". This is how humans have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years, with a slant towards family involvement for most of that period (and today in some communities), for a reason.

Knowing two people and seeing the "overlap" in humour, personalities and interests means you can suggest they should hang out. That is far more likely to work - even for an interesting hook-up - than two people who find each other physically attractive with zero common ground emotionally or personality overlap.

There's some idea in here for an app where your friends and family help you using their networks. If you socialise a lot, this will happen anyway (particularly if you get on with that one person nearly every social circle has who loves to connect people up), but if you don't, there is room for some help, maybe.

In the meantime, don't read the books, don't "peacock", don't assume the apps will save you. Go do some hobbies that have social clubs (running, reading groups, a local adult education centre), just go meet people. You might not meet "the one" there, but they might have a friend...

Just on the chance your name isn't a coincidence: did I grow up 3 doors from you, in Havant?

(I have stranger connections than that if so — duskwuff won't recognise this username, but I recognise theirs).

I did not. I'm in the UK, and the last time I checked there were over 2500 of us on the electoral register in the UK alone. My surname is the 2nd most common surname in England, and the 1st most common in the North West where I grew up. :)

I actually think OK Cupid is a pretty bad idea. It allows people to make things that are pretty superficial when you are together, e.g. politics, deal breakers. An example of this is that I am allergic to cats and would always set that as a deal breaker. It turns out, the woman I met and married has cats. We make it work.

The swipe apps are even worse and the whole online dating order is backward. You sort people on very superficial metrics, agree to a date, then see if you have common ground and get along. Social hobbies are the way to go. It is much more natural order where you get to know someone, see if you get along, and then go on a date once it is already established that you like each other.

But that's why OK Cupid can work. It's a Bayesian prior being updated with new data, not hardline deal breakers. You and your partner made it work, but if somebody who was exactly the same as your partner in every other respect but who also had cat allergies (and I know this is not possible, never mind feasible to prove), you would from a Bayesian perspective be more compatible than you are with your partner.

Also, I don't know where you live, but I'd love to live somewhere where differing politics isn't a deal breaker in a relationship - it must be a pretty settled and stable place. Canada maybe? Switzerland? New Zealand?

I'm in the UK, and I (and I think everyone I know), absolutely 100% could not be in a relationship with somebody on the other side of the UK political spectrum any more - it's too divisive, too much has happened, it's not in the slightest bit superficial, and with all the other stuff that needs to go well to make a relationship work over the long term, throwing that in the mix as something to "make work" feels like too high a burden for me.

As such, a dating app that gets that out of the way to avoid the awkward and angry second date seems essential in this country at least.

Interesting how much gender bias seems to be in this article. Several reviews from the perspective of women on issues affecting women or both genders. Only one review from a man and it's focused on topics that are gender neutral and not the issues specific to men using dating apps.

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for women to think their dating/reproductive strategies are the only valid ones. Combined with the fact that young men are hormonally driven and immature, we have the common recipe for failure.

Regrettably, the Guardian is gynocentric to its core.

That's the current overton window in the Western nations that are experiencing a demographic crisis.

Everyone has their own experience, but mine is that guys tend to message when their horny, if I reply with matched energy, then they presumably rub one out and don't message for a few days and the cycle repeats.

Apparently there's a large subset of guys who can't seem to take the step of meeting up in person for irl fun. Direct questions like, "How about we meet at X place on Y day at Z time?" are never responded to. It gets old real fast.

On another note, I'd expect LLMs to enter the space soon. A dating/hookup coach has to be in the works and I wouldn't be surprised to see it pop up soon. The honest truth is that most folks put very little energy into conversations.

I'd imagine is a treasure trove of data being collected that could give people insightful feedback on whether what they are doing matches their stated intent. With at least half of the folks I talk what, I ask myself, "Why is this person on here?"

It won't be a coach but a "chat on my behalf" thing, because indeed all humans try to minimize energy expenditure.

My goal is to improve my own skill. I feel like such a feature wouldn't accomplish what I'm seeking :/

As a south Asian man, I noticed that I would get very few likes from white women in London. And I began to internalise this implicit feedback,

Back before Match.com bought OKCupid, the OKCupid blog had some horrifying gems. IIRC, Asian men had the lowest ratings among women and black women had the lowest ratings among men. Looks like Gwern archived their blog posts:

https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/raceandattraction20...

Regarding general complaints about the awful online dating experience for men, this post made it clear that it's a descent into madness for the average guy:

https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/whyyoushouldneverpa...

In my experience using dating apps, they are "soft prostitution" rings for people that don't earn that well (both sides).

No matter how you gamify the swipes, or how users fake their profiles to appear interesting or desirable, in the end it is what it is.

dominant strategy equilibrium

both parties are forced to choose the worst possible option

dating apps are a perfect example of how will happily disrupt one of the most vital and important aspects of society to make a buck

if you're single and looking, do everything you can to reject this commoditization of your soul, body, and future family.

EDIT: This isn't a judgement on people who've found and had fulfilling relationships online, mind you. I just think leaving our most important things up to an algorithm has second- and third-order effects that I suspect may not be great for the collective. It certainly has messed up our politics, for example.

In the US the apps don't work at all. I have no idea how to get likes here. It is tremendously easier for me to just approach a woman in a bar or in a coffee shop. The business modell has failed. Tinder actually defrauded me. My account (email only just disappeared), they claim I "deleted it" and my paid subscription has gone down the drain. (Warning, don't use Tinder, does not work and they scam you).

In the US it is a waste of time. Just people who collect IG followers and attention whores.

Social media is making us all a bit more narcissistic, which means less empathy for the person on the other side of the connection. In addition it appears that women are chasing the same small percentage of men such that these men do not have a real punishment for bad social behavior -- there is one more woman right behind her if she gets offended. (Again, narcissism). Many men primarily want sex, many women primarily want a full fledged relationship, this has been known for decades if not centuries. It's no surprise this is expressed, and exacerbated, in apps and the current times.

My suggestion? 1st: realize dating apps are at best a supplement to a health social life. and 2nd Try to get yourself to date that which feels "down" from you, as that's most likely an adjustment in the correct direction given the shift in how we all seem to overestimate our desirablity and underestimate others'. Particularly "down" in the least important parts of a stable long term relationship -- Income over median, looks beyond disgust, and things entirely outside of the person's control (especially if they're healthily compensating for it, like a person who maybe has a scar but a great personality...)

> 53% of US adults under 30

It shocks how low this number is. Far below my perception that nearly everyone >22 had.

You mean an entire industry built on hooks up have people mainly looking for hooks ups on it? Color me shocked.

I have thought a lot about dating. I hope some of it is helpful. What I write is quite opinionated, so I'm pretty sure you won't agree with all of it. I hope the parts you agree with, that it inspires you. I've tried to help many of my friends with dating, it pains me to see people being so stuck and not finding the love of their lives. It pained me too, which is why I put in all of my effort into it for a while.

This is not comprehensive and I didn't really edit my comment, all of this is just a quick stream of consciousness comment.

How I approached Tinder and (online) dating:

1. Tinder is a toxic environment, it's too focused on looks. I need to be toxic back to detoxify it, not in ethical terms but in practical terms. In ethical terms, I believe to be ethically neutral what I did but I think some people might have find what I did a bit negative. Given that I found it a toxic environment, I decided to put on my hacker mindset. My hacker mindset stems from hacking the school system (accelerated studying when it wasn't allowed) and learning how to hack computers (a couple of courses from uni which were really good and I constantly asked "how does this relate to having a "hacker mindset" ?).

2. You can learn about your matching rate by passport traveling to any big western European city that has prostitute accounts on there. Should they be on there? No, but after reporting so many of them I realized they weren't going away. So I stopped reporting them and used them as a side channel because the fact is they swipe right on everyone. Since they swipe right on everyone, and the maximum amount of swipes per minute is 60 (I've tested this) and they match me within about 2 minutes, it means that I'm about 120 cards down on the average stack. This meant that my profile was getting shown. If you have a different experience, you have evidence that your profile is not being shown.

3. Men have to start a conversation. The way to go about that is to say the most original thing you can about something you observe in her pictures. You have to be at least in the top 5 most interesting matches for her to be able to respond (I know this because once I got a lot of matches after months of tweaking, that was my limit). People complain about it: the reality is that for many of us is that dating is not a comfortable experience. So embrace that and mentally prep for it. My skills are meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy. The things that can happen are brutal, be prepared for it. I've been: ghosted, into passionate relationships while later neglected, dine & dashed (for an innocuous amount thankfully) and more things. In my experience, dating was brutal. It's okay because I know that people don't intend for it to be brutal, we're simply all very specific about our inimate lives.

4. You need to be photogenic. You don't need to be hot. Again, you need to be photogenic. If you're not photogenic then edit your pictures until they look like the best shot picture of you ever. Make all your pictures like that. Use photoshop, lightroom, AI, whatever it takes. Go ask people for feedback if this still looks like you. If it does but you clearly see an improvement: use it. This is one of the things that people might think is unethical, but if your friends think it looks like you, IMO, you're good. My dates never called me out on my AI edited pictures, neither has my wife. When I told her before we got a relationship that my pictures were AI edited, she was surprised since they looked like me. Yea, but those pictures gave me way more matches than the pictures that are the "natural" me. Again, the reason is because people select photogenic people and they don't realize it. I went into this topic quite a bit to verify it. See also [1, 2] (using photofeeler in your pipeline is not necessary by the way, I tested that too).

5. Make sure you swipe a lot. Use your hacker mindset to think about how to do this efficiently. I swiped 200K profiles in total with minimal time investment. I had to, I got 300 matches out of it (aka women I actually would potentially like) so I knew it'd be going through the weeds.

6. When looking at profiles, don't be too judgmental, don't humanize them too much either. Humanize people when you go on dates, as you will see the real them. Humanize people more when you chat with them. Profiles aren't human. Profiles are profiles. At best they are shadows of who we actually are and we can't read too much into them. IMO a human is the most human in the dating process when you see them for real. This also means: get unmatched randomly? Whatever. Someone is having a mean chat with you? Whatever. Weird things in someone's profile? Verify on the first date if it is an actual problem. My friends were too judgmental. I found my wife on one of the profiles that if I would've been too judgmental, I'd have skipped her profile as her bio was very very short. I figured she was just super casual about it (which was true).

7. When you go on a date and in a chat, make sure that 10% of your conversation is playful. This only goes for serious people like me (I tend to do 95% playfulness because it's so easy for me to be serious and I actually love playfulness but forget about it all the time, and it creates all kinds of memories and triggers to stay playful forever with the person you bond with, and then it weaves in amazingly nicely with my serious side). If you're not playful, you're dead in the water. People want to be able to have fun and feel comfortable, playfulness achieves this way better than humor. Though, while the concepts are related as playfulness leads to humor, playfulness is a much more expansive topic to meet these emotional needs.

8. Meditate with loving-kindness meditation and Vipassana (mindfulness) to build up a thick skin and be loving at the same time. The thick skin will protect you against the brutal nature of dating and the loving part will give you a warm vibe towards yourself, others and the world in general.

9. When on dates: always be respectful and well intentioned and be capable of stating your own needs when it becomes necessary. Don't know how to respectfully say your own needs? Read about non-violent communication by Marshal Rosenberg. I always ask at the end of the first date if I can kiss them (if I am into them). Asking this at the first date is IMO not a necessary thing, if you want to go slower, feel free. It's a bit weird to ask perhaps, but it is the most respectful way I know how to go about it. Yea sure, you can be "natural" and just "go for it" and risk weird/unwanted situations. I'd rather have some potential social awkwardness by being explicit and clear.

[1] https://blog.photofeeler.com/bad-selfies-what-do-i-look-like...

[2] https://blog.photofeeler.com/why-do-i-look-different-in-pict...

The problem with dating apps is they turn to shit when it’s time for the platform to monetize.

Ugh why is a dating article near the top of HN? Go to reddit for that nonsense.

the impact of technology on relationships is an important thing to understand and discuss. if you don't like it, don't read it

I would have liked an article on this topic to have more of a tech focus or population level perspective. This article is a short gender biased anecdata piece that is not at all insightful in my opinion. Expanding on the last point about how the algorithm is affecting perspective and other factors would be better.

This is your third comment in this thread that mentions "gender biased". It's an article in the "Lifestyle" category of a news website, it's not a scientific study with balanced sample set.

Yeah agreed. Like it or not this is how most people connect and analyzing tech of connections is necessary.

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