Matched and Deleted | Hacker News Reader

Matched and Deleted

dikshaupadhyay.com

70 pointsrgbimbochamp65 comments

This article claims that only 5% of hinge users find a long-term partner on the app:

> The stats are bleak. Industry-wide, only about 10% of users find a long-term partner. Hinge? Roughly 5%.

However, this is not what their linked source says:

> Tinder is also the most successful matchmaker, with 29.6% of respondents engaged or married to a partner from the app. Bumble and Hinge trail behind at 12.9% and 5%, respectively.

5% of survey respondents were engaged or married to someone from hinge. This reflects the relative popularity of the different apps, not your odds of finding love on them.

P(A|B) = [P(A)*P(B|A)]/P(B), all the rest is commentary.

more commonly known as Bayes’ theorem.

The author's name, "Diksha", means initiation into a system of knowledge or insight. Your comment shows, ironically, that you have a crucial insight that the author lacks; the real diksha here is conveyed by reading your comment.

After finding my partner on Hinge (following years of dating apps, setups, and in-person approaches), I've reflected on this journey. Despite the countless disappointing dates, the 3-year struggle ultimately proved worthwhile.

However, I'm troubled by how profit motives distort online dating. The business model incentivizes engagement over meaningful connections, creating a system where genuine relationships feel like marketing bait for swipe addiction.

Hinge worked best for me and several friends, but I suspect its designers know how to better facilitate connections—improvements they avoid implementing because they would hurt revenue.

This has sparked my interest in creating an open-source, non-profit dating platform—one designed to address loneliness without answering to shareholders who prioritize metrics over human well-being.

I’m not sure that I’ll ever go through with it but I think it would be a worthwhile project to consider.

I think it's a fantastic idea! Having met 90% of my girlfriends through dating apps, I've watched them all gradually morph into Tinder clones with dark patterns and steep monthly fees ($20-$50). It's terrifying to think you might never meet your future spouse because you accidentally swiped left on a touchscreen.

I used to really like OkCupid. Old school OkC reminded me of Bantr from Ted Lasso, it was more personality-driven. You'd answer hundreds of questions and see compatibility scores with people nearby. Even though that might be a questionable metric (I actually enjoy dating people different from me), it was interesting to sort by inverse and see who I was supposedly incompatible with.

What I love most about meeting through apps is how low-pressure it feels. There's no second-guessing about whether they're interested, if they're single, or worrying that you're bothering them. A dating app that actually tries to help people connect instead of sucking us dry through backtrack fees would be amazing.

I have no knowledge of the non-profit space, how would you initially fund something like that?

A non-profit dating platform probably means you don’t charge much- which initially seems good, but it probably also means you’ll attract a bunch of users who aren’t serious because they have nothing at risk. So the people who are seriously looking for a relationship will be lost in all the casual users. Sure, you could make people deposit a bunch of money to prove they’re serious but you’ll lose all your users.

If you can figure out how to select people seriously looking for a relationship without becoming a pay to play app then it would be popular. But so far nobody knows how to do that. Or maybe someone does know but they won’t do it because there’s no profit in it.

Another idea I had to play a role in solving that issue (not that I’ve really thought too deeply about it yet) is, similar to how the free version of Hinge works, greatly limiting the amount of likes you can send in a day. Perhaps with greater limit for women since all data shows that men need to send many times more likes for much fewer matches. However, there is no paid tier where you get more like or anything like that, obviously. Because then it would be just like every other app.

Is it possible to root out everyone who “isn’t serious”? Definitely not, but I think there’s a lot more that can be done when you remove a profit motive.

You could charge a lot and only not have dark patterns :-). Nothing says you have to charge a little because you are open-source/foss.

Yes. Make it a one time payment that is sufficiently large and you remove the pressure to retain users. In fact, it would be the opposite; find a great match as soon as possible to get the user off your platform.

Also likely is attracting a lot of bots and scammers and not having the resources to keep the platform focused on real people.

Take a deposit and refund part of it when you prove you have a marriage certificate. Will you be my McBride?

Isn’t it the usual case that dating app users do not pay?

That is the case, but practically this entire comment section is about how the usual dating apps suck. GP was commenting about how they hoped they could build a better app, and I was pointing out an issue that is likely to keep it from being successful.

I appreciate your empathetic need to help, but the answer is not more tech, no matter how that tech is funded. It's less tech. As a species we have to return to more local life where we grow up knowing those around us, including the opposite sex, and pair off that way. Humans did not evolve to live in gigantic cities of millions of people and be able to select mates from the entire dating app population (I include Facebook and Instagram in that). The way our instincts want to select mates works best in local groups, like how we lived as a species thousands of years ago.

> As a species we have to return to more local life where we grow up knowing those around us

This only works if the local people accept you. I know many LGBT people who aren’t accepted by those around them. Personally, I left everyone I grew up around because I couldn’t find friends or work.

Yeah, having a community of people that love each other and can learn about one person's relative over here who might be a good match for another person's relative over there is a nice way to facilitate such networking.

Of course, those kinds of situations depend on the goodness of those doing the matchmaking, i.e. there must be no money changing hands (to coerce anyone), and the happiness of the potential couple must be the primary goal.

Getting one's selfish motives out of any interaction is a root problem in the human world, especially in many old-world cultures where women's rights don't count for shit. The sooner those old cultures are reformed, the better.

Girl Power!

I don’t completely disagree with you but I don’t think that’s very realistic to be honest.

Plus, in my experience, I felt very similarly in that I wanted to meet someone in “real life”. That felt important to me, to have some kind of story about how the relationship began that wasn’t “we met on Hinge”.

But after meeting that person, after so much trying and heartbreak and struggle, I realized how much I don’t care at all how we met. Just that I’m so happy to have them in my life.

Meeting in person is awesome, but having a companion who feels like your person isn’t diminished because you met on a dating app in my opinion and experience.

I think the accepted truth that dating apps like Hinge are terrible for finding long-term partners ignores the fact that most people are not really trying to use them to find a long-term partner. They might say they wanted to find a long-term partner, but that doesn't correspond to their use of the app. They aren't using them in any kind of dedicated or organized way. They just load them up when they're bored and waste a bit of time aimlessly swiping, messaging the odd match and going on the occasional date.

It's a bit like if I say I want to write a novel, but all I do is sporadically open up Google Docs and write for 30 minutes before losing inspiration and doing something else. If I never write a book, is that Google Docs fault, or mine? Despite their flaws, I think modern dating apps actually provide a pretty good toolset for finding a long-term partner. But like any tool, your results will depend mostly on your skill and dedication in putting it to use.

But I prefer my tools to come with proper instructions on the box.

The reason the "tool" works for you is that you are willing to game the system. Everything can be a hammer.

Those really looking for a casual hookup rarely are honest about it. The pond might shrink if they are (maliciously or not). This then requires a much more guarded and hard approach for those seriously looking for longterm relationships.

There is a signal value in what tool you use. Even though they might all look like a hammer to you.

People are accepting invitations on Facebook. But around here it is commonly known to only mean either an intention of attending (or just showing support even). Again Facebook the tool is not to blame. Hence I do not use that tool. No fault of the tool in itself.

So I think that the lament is not that dating apps are misused. People are "free" to do that. But what should the people who want a (for the lack of a better term) "real dating" app do?

Some thrive in this new world. But I would claim that we get more and more lonely while hiding behind our screens.

The extroverts had an easier time even before the apps. With the apps they thrive. The introverts just got an even harder time navigating this.

Dating apps are pure hell for those who "want to write the book". I do not blame the tool but I do see a real world issue.

What you’re describing is just human nature. I also wish for a world where everyone was honest with their intentions. It’s not realistic. You might as well just complain about humanity as a whole, unless you have a better idea, or can fix humanity, dating apps do a decent job.

Agreed.

But I read your comment as complacency.

I believe the fix is to complain. How else to change human nature?

That is the best part: we can change. We can do better.

Naive? Maybe. Probably. But I would prefer idealist. Pretty much potato/potato in my world.

This is a noble idea which I completely respect.

But changing human nature is a tough task. Plus, changing a trait into something that seems better (e.g., full honesty on goals) might have all sorts of unexpected consequences. There are dark fiction stories about societies with forced honesty (and a few who figured out the way out of it). The road to hell and all that.

No offense intended. My 2c.

> But changing human nature is a tough task.

It is up to each of us to self-reflect and then make the effort to self-evolve. The key to this is doing so for the benefit/happiness of others.

> There are dark fiction stories about societies with forced honesty

Of course. a) It's fiction, b) We must choose to be honest and then make the effort to both know the truth and manifest the truth in not just what we say but what we do.

And, everyone should know that the worst lies are those we tell ourselves, thus the deeeeeep wisdom of "Know thyself." It is the essential foundation for aiming the compass towards a better path.

this is very naive and kind of adorable if you look at it in the grand scheme of things nothing really has changed since the days of the theocracy

we have gigantic compute clusters that do things what humans would have thought as deities but have people advocating for the return of feudalism

we are closer to pride and prejudice than ring world that won't change in the next 1000 years or so regardless of the amount of wisdom

> nothing really has changed since the days of the theocracy

democracy is God's Will, because all our free wills are equal, and we should work together in cooperation instead of against each other in competition

theocracy based upon love has basically never been tried

most theocrats are just doing it for the power, money, and sex, in whichever order

the Wisdom of the lovers of God are also the lovers of their neighbors, but they do not rule nations, or even cities

but they could, if only the people tried to learn the value of compassion

that is the only path to success, all else is compromise, and often a horrible one at that

  always love, teach to always love
  never hate, teach to never hate

we could choose to live compassionately, create compassionate societies, if we wanted, but our selfish desires must be shelved to do so

and so, it's just more of the same, with different tech, now in service to the Church of the Almighty Dollar, no matter which denomination

"Same as it ever was." --Talking Heads

None taken. At all!

If you take everything to the extreme "full" honesty becomes "blunt" honesty. I do not advocate that. Pink Floyd answered that with "The Trial". Dark fiction tends to explore the extremes and to me often tends to miss the nuances. Reading such fiction can and should be thought-provoking but not be seen as a pattern.

The kind of honesty I try to advocate is a personal stance. Can you be trusted? Do your viewpoints falter under pressure? Are you able to change them openly? So it all basicly ties into a sense of morality. A bit of a dirty word in our business first world of today.

Reach for the moon and all that. ;-)

Has it occurred to you that tools are created by people for reasons, which absolutely may be judged both for intentional malice and insufficiently forestalled harmful consequence?

Yes.

But taking such a stance will make it much harder to move the discourse forward in a positive way.

I am prone to bitterness and dystopic thinking. To combat this I try to find a positive view to move forward.

Humans and humanity is not a force of good. Greed is too foundational in our nature. Our ability to improve based on ideas is our only really redeeming feature. Both a blessing and a curse.

'Judged,' I said, not 'prejudged;' for example I would like to see certain responsible individuals, as well as (I guess now Meta indirectly but beneficially d/b/a) Facebook the corporate entity, answer charges in some competent and not currently extant court of knowing complicity in at least one genocide. (The talking shop and mutual disadmiration society called the International Criminal Court has for decades lacked competence on the obvious grounds that enforcement scales in inverse proportion to the geopolitical relevance of the judgment. A law so unevenly enforced is no law an honest American should recognize, though I grant we seem somewhat thin on the ground these days.)

In any case what's dystopic in desiring that a system of governance under law function basically as designed? I realize the idea of any kind of international cooperation beyond the scope of new mercantile or Hanseatic Leagues is lately much out of fashion, but as noted I'm a touch old-fashioned myself, enough so still to consider that what's good for the goose is, broadly and taking one thing with another, likely about as tasty a dressing for the gander. Certainly in either case the bird seems lately about equally cooked.

If we have supranational corporations - Facebook claims half the species, which I might believe 10% exaggerated at most - and thus supranational crimes, then we should, always as a norm if not at all times in practical effect, have supranational courts and like-scoped means of deterring bad behavior. Lacking those, we face a return more or less to the days of the East India Companies, or - for younger folks, who may more intuitively grasp fictional examples inspired by that history - Weyland-Yutani and the like.

This is so true. For many people it is just a nice validation boost. You don't need to do anything apart from the initial set-up. Likes and matches will start trickling on their own and you don't have to compromise on anything. Any requests for meeting up or video chat or similar can be ignored or the person can be deleted. There is nothing like this in the real world.

Personally, I’ve only ever been on three dates my entire life — all of them with women I met on Hinge while I was active on it last year. None went past the first date. When my account was new, I got more matches than I could reasonably handle. But that slowly changed into a trickle, and eventually no matches for months on end. I had lots of motivation to meet someone in the beginning; now I begrudgingly feel resigned to my reality. Who knows, maybe it could’ve been a different story if I was a bit taller, went to a different school, or was a different ethnicity. But there isn’t much I can do about those things. In the meantime, I’m just trying to keep in shape and take care of myself in ways that I can.

My experience was extremely difficult and I think many people underestimate that unless you get really lucky early on, it’s a lot of work to seriously date.

To be honest I have a lot of the features that people think equal automatic success on a dating app but I would still go weeks, sometimes months without a match. Or worse, get matches but have nobody respond despite taking the time to come up with something funny or interesting to say (not just “hey”).

Something important I realized now that I’m out of it is to take breaks, sometimes long breaks, from any kind of “trying”, whether online or in-person. I took many breaks that were out of a place of being angry at myself for not being attractive or charismatic enough or whatever it was that was causing me to fail. But if I could do it over again, I’d be telling myself that I’m getting tired of this right now, and that’s okay. I’ll put it away for a few weeks or months or even years if I felt I needed that time. Then try again.

one human's struggle is another's riches at least you got some matches?

imagine being so revolting you didn't get any like me keep ya head up

Money quotes:

> They understand that people don’t make decisions based on features or specifications, alone. They make decisions based on how something makes them feel.

> Despite innovative products, countless tech startups remain bland and interchangeable in the public eye. The reason? They focus on what they do, not why they do it. Tech companies pour resources into engineering and user acquisition, but treat branding as an afterthought – maybe a logo here, a quirky Twitter (now X) voice there. Technical solutions solve functional problems but they’re not equipped to make people care.

> Facts tell, but stories sell.

A bunch of good examples.

For the standard objections that some people pick things not because of feelings but because they have a problem to solve: why do these people want to solve that problem?

> why do these people want to solve that problem?

Answer, because it's a problem. It's by definition. Oxford: "a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome"

Fine; why is that a problem for them? Why aren't they ignoring it? Etc, until you find a motivation that's not directly reducible to the technical challenge for which you're offering a solution.

> The stats are bleak. Industry-wide, only about 10% of users find a long-term partner. Hinge? Roughly 5%. That’s worse than your odds at a Vegas table (a good 35%-50%). But still, people flock to it. Why?

I know I fall into a unique-ish category, but let me tell why about 1% of men flock to it. Because they have the skill in dating but online is easiest. Before online dating my potential to match with an attractive woman was once per week. With online dating: 25 per week.

I'm at best an average looking guy. Having a cleft lip and being skinny doesn't help.

But with dating I've honed my hacker mindset. Like computers, human social systems are systems to be curious about. There are ways to influence it that helps you get to where you want to go.

Before dating apps, my favorite way to find dates was to compliment people on the street around 1 PM (lunch break while working remotely). Anyone I saw that I had a genuine compliment for, I'd give it. Men, women, dog (who's a good boy? :D), cat (hey cat, I respect you, please be kind :') ), didn't matter. 50% of people thank you and immediately move on. The other 50%, I'd just see where the vibe would go. Most of the time nothing would happen. Occasionally, I'd land a date or find a friend. The idea here simply is: it's a numbers game of finding people that you jive with.

The reason it needed to be also social is because when I tried to make it solely romantic, I became too needy and had too much of a taker's mindset. When I made it more social, I always had more of a giver's mindset (regardless of whether I was attracted to someone or not). I've experimented quite a bit to land on this way of getting dates.

I tried online dating for a few times, and it didn't work out as I got 0 to 3 matches per month. But then, like dating in real life, I decided to put on my hacker mindset. Over the course of a few months, I slowly saw my matches increase. The principles I found that worked are:

1. You need to be in front of as many people as possible

2. You need to be as high on the stack of cards as possible (so the other person doesn't have swiping fatigue)

3. You need to look as hot as you possible can

I optimized towards that. Fun fact about #3: the way you look in pictures doesn't even need to correspond that much to real life, not really. If you think I'm wrong, go and test it! Hackers test, so do scientists. Having a testing mindset has been invaluable when it comes to dating. What also helped is a really big motivation to "get this handled". I don't know why my motivation has been this big but it was. I've met people that look and act similar to how I am but aren't as motivated and they're not really getting anywhere (one of them is a very close friend of mine).

So back to #3: I basically became good at Photoshop and photography. I'd take pictures and edit pictures in such a way that it'd be the best picture I take in my life. My justification for editing: if it stays within the range of how women "edit their face" with make-up, then this is digital make-up for men. So it was nothing too crazy. But it definitely helped. And just like the female instagram models have all these tricks to look more attractive, I learned from them and figured out my own tricks. Are you skinny? A blazer is your best friend as it will make your shoulders look much larger. And so on. I never got called out on this as I stayed within the range of "make-up editing" and I'd show up on dates with a blazer as well. Humans are vein like that and after decades of not leaning into it, I decided to lean into it.

I'm married nowadays :) It took me 30 online dates in my thirties to find her. And countless of IRL dates and failed relationships that I have happened in my twenties. Oh, and therapy and self-therapy (the self-therapy being exposure to social situations that I'd have anxiety from).

Anyway, I hope this helps. I sometimes write about dating on this site as I know there's a group out here that still have as much difficulty as I did when I was younger. Feel free to search on my comments. It should have enough info on how to get out of it. I used to help people who emailed me but I don't have the bandwidth at the moment.

Not sure from what time is your experience is from, if it’s pre Covid, I would say it’s outdated. Dating apps in the last few years turned into hyper optimised tunnels to get money out of their users while keeping them in the app with algorithms surgically portioning interactions aimed to keep their users swiping.

About 2 years ago. Most principles I used are more than 10 years old. Certain other things were found by experimentation between 2.5 and 2 years ago

You should write a substack! "How to date and get married" is a lot less toxic than the nonsense that the Andrew Tates/PUAs of this world are selling.

That's fair enough. I'll consider it.

The irony here is that part of what I've learned is because of PUAs. Not Andrew Tate though, his advice is criminally toxic. And a lot of advice is metaphorical dirt to the point that it really does feel like one is mining for nuggets of gold of wisdom. Being sceptical but open really helped. Back then (2004), I had nowhere else to look. PUAs taught me the concept of playfulness really well, including the advice that taking improv classes help with that as well.

It was really hard to understand, given my specific blend of neurodivergence, but once I understood how a big part of my personality is inherently playful (always has been), a lot of my dating issues were fixed. Not all though, but I think unearthing my own inner playful self, which was there behind all the layers, has helped me tremendously. Thoroughly understanding and digging up my own playfulness has been one of the best investments in my life.

I also learned a lot thanks to Tal Ben-Shahar's positive psychology class in 2006. In an indirect way, I owe my HN username to that class as metta is loving-kindness meditation and meditation super charged my life (and dating life).

Do you mean you have a surgically repaired cleft lip that gives you a slight sneer, or are you telling us you have an up-to-the-nostril cleft lip and covering it up with Photoshop worked for you?

Respectfully, I don’t want to talk about the topic of my cleft lip. It hurts to talk about it.

It’s hard enough bringing it up. I bring it up to give evidence to the fact that I am not a stereotypical good looking guy. Because I am not.

I feel we are bad at assessing our own attractiveness (unless you are exceptionally top-model like attractive). Most people who find you attractive will never tell you. This is particularly true for men as women are socialised to not be that overt about their romantic interests.

An additional truth is that straight women tend to be much less picky about physical appearance than straight men. Despite what many single men will tell you, their difficulty in finding a partner often has much more to do with their personality than their appearance.

That has been my experience as well. The nuanced exception: online dating. During a date looks don’t matter much but getting swiped right? Being photogenic really helps. Which is not the same thing as looks but it plays into it

Problem with online dating is that it's designed to make users act based on the profile pictures (mostly). You notice this because in most apps the first and most prominent detail of a profile is the picture.

Online dating is like online chats, people behave differently

Hence photoshop and photography skills by observing the tricks that models do

It is a problem indeed and I decided to get good at being photogenic - comparatively to how I am built/how I look

nah igor disagrees :)

The odds in real life are truly not that much better, people are just willing to settle more.

But the thing is, if you’re online dating there is no reason to settle. If you wanted to settle, you’d just meet people in real life. Online dating is for you to take a chance at getting the best you can get. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. People just don’t understand this. If you’re not at the top % of the dating pool in attractiveness, stick to real life

if you look in the mirror and scare yourself or a girl made you wear a bag over your face during sex like me just become a monk :)

Are respondents truthful in interviews? I found my wife using a dating application. It was very easy, I just had to widen the geography I was searching.

Same here, I was lucky being a digital nomad, hopping about in western Europe. There also needs to be a willingness to have a long distance relationship though.

Galactic search enabled ;-)

lol for some of us i doubt multi galatic multi dimensional searches would yield nothing

your double negative implies confidence

and confidence is the most effective quality

he who knows himself and the enemy will not lose in 100 battles

but who can foresee fate's fickle finger of luck?

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