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Comment by john_strinlai | Hacker News Reader

>OkCupid gave users different prices based on whether they selected male or female for their profile.

never heard or thought about this before, but it kind of makes sense for a dating app. its one of the only levers available to them to attempt any sort of balance between user genders. it sucks for everyone (including the users) if the male:female ratio is like 20:1 or whatever.

i would rather pay a couple of extra dollars, relative to the opposite sex, if it meant access to a wider pool of potential matches.

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If your main problem with a dating app is that men pay more than women, then you’re not going to like being in a relationship very much at all :)

It's not 1965 anymore.

So you’ll birth one kid and she’ll birth the other?

Zero and zero?

what?

It's not 1965 anymore.

Reminds of being a young guy and feeling annoyed when girls are being let into clubs for free without waiting in line, and I had to wait in line and pay. Sometimes I could not get in because the club was "full", but the girls would be allowed in.

If the service is free, you are the product :-)

It used to be that promoters were paid per woman they brought to the club and nothing for men, and they would in turn charge a cover per man.

No idea how these businesses operate now. I'm sure there's still sliding scales of sliminess based on the quality of the club and its management.

Aren't they going out of business in large numbers? I'm not sure how much of that has to do with the dating scene as much as it has to do with younger people drinking less though.

I think all attempts to explain "why <market based on discretionary spending by young people> is failing" that don't come to the conclusion "we're macro-economically cooked" are wrong.

In the 80's a club near me got into some sort of trouble for that so they switched to skirt night - only a tiny number of men were willing to wear a skirt to get in free.

In the clubs I used to go as a young man, it was both men and women that jumped the queue, and it tended to be how you looked and who you knew. Although it tended to be good looking women and rich/connected men.

If you exclude bots and otherwise fake accounts the ratio is much worse than 20:1.

that sucks!

whatever more accurate numbers you want to substitute in there is fine, the point remains the same.

My point is that what you're being asked to pay for is wildly misrepresented.

To be more explicit: you're paying extra to give more porn bots access to your inbox.

The ratio is that bad anyway.

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