Carrot Dating - Date people by 'bribing' them | Hacker News Reader

Carrot Dating - Date people by 'bribing' them

carrotdating.com

12 pointsKartificial20 comments

My pet theory is that to meet great people (dates or not), you need to apply an "antifragile" approach. Basically, lower the cost of an interaction (which is meeting face to face not messaging for days) and meet many.

From this perspective, dating websites (and this one especially) are just horrendous. They have a very high price for each interaction: women waste time reading many messages, men waste time sending many messages.

I am betting that a couple of days talking to random strangers on the street gives you more results than months spent on these sites.

And for added sexism, the whole page of course strongly implies ugly rich men ("fat chance") buying hot young girls.

Checking the about page is pretty terrifying... Wade is founder of SeekingArrangement.com - the leading sugar daddy dating website, SeekingMillionaire.com - a millionaire matchmaking website, WhatsYourPrice.com - where singles bid for first dates, and MissTravel.com - the first travel dating website.

Is this satire? Looking at the site the message I get is "Here are 12 women who will be bought, to some degree, for a price. Make a bid and see how much you get."

Let's not pretend real life is that much different. You can imagine scoring a date with a very popular girl just by some funny joke at the coffee machine all you want, but inviting her to a show or taking her out for dinner will be much more successful.

While impressing women with wealth certainly works, and there are some things you can straight-up buy[1] that will immediately boost your attractiveness, in general trying to win women over with favours (dinners, shows, shopping sprees) works against you. It signals that you're so desperate as to be willing to buy attention.

I'd say everything on that list except for coffee and maybe drinks is a sucker's bet.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19302732

Aww, that citation is for the much less striking part of your post. Do you have a citation for the 'works against you' effect being stronger than the 'works for you' effect? It doesn't sound like something you can conclude without actual study.

I don't know. Everyone's different. All my relationships have started because I hit it off with the person in question.

(For the avoidance of doubt, by 'hit it off' I mean 'got on well with').

For the most part, you need to ask people out. You can't depend on them doing it for you, nor can you just wait for something spontaneous to happen. However, I reject the idea that you have to shower women with money to get them to go out with you. Something like going out for coffee is low-key and harder to reject, whereas a show or dinner puts on a lot of pressure. It might help if you were funny at the coffee machine last week.

What's the deal with "popular" as an adjective, anyways? It seems like a habit of putting people into categories like a cliche high school movie.

>> However, I reject the idea that you have to shower women with money to get them to go out with you. Something like going out for coffee is low-key and harder to reject, whereas a show or dinner puts on a lot of pressure.

Sure, no disagreement here. I'm not defending anyone who thinks gifts or display of wealth are appropriate or necessary to get a date, just stating the fact they often increase your chance with women (maybe men as well, I don't have experience with that).

The thing that strikes me when people talk about relationships, they often pretend materialistic motives are some imaginary and mostly bad thing. In the real world, wealth (self-sufficiency) is (and has always been) a pretty strong factor for desirability.

>> What's the deal with "popular" as an adjective, anyways? It seems like a habit of putting people into categories like a cliche high school movie.

By 'popular' I mean 'attractive' for whatever reason (intelligent, funny, good-looking, etc). Or in other words: not likely to be short on attention from potential dates. I don't think of it as a high school cliche.

Am I the only one that thinks online dating isn't superficial? Yes you have the pictures but you also have a complete rundown of the persons likes, dislikes, personality, what they do for a living, as well as how attractive they are.

Bribing people is a really good way to get bad dates. You have no idea of your shared interests, personalities, nothing at all to gauge whether you are of compatible attractiveness.

Absolutely agree. I think this app sounds horrendous.

Online dating is certainly a lot less superficial than picking people up in a bar.

I've read somewhere that a significant fraction of modern relationships (a third?) start online. And they tend to be relatively stable. There's clearly something to be said for discussion interests before looking at the picture.

"Start online" does not mean "on online dating". My current relationship started "online" - we met on last.fm and noticed that we went to the same concerts. From there on it's basically a regular dating story.

'WHAT IF A BRIBEE ACCEPTS THE BRIBE, BUT THE DATE NEVER HAPPENS?

Once a bribe is accepted, it is up to the members to communicate and plan the details of the date. Even after bribe acceptance, some dates may not happen.'

- There is something gloriously appropriate about this being in the FREQUENTLY asked questions.

I wonder what kind of people sign up to this... Then again, maybe they fit together.

This app is a golddigger's wet dream

And I thought I was cynical. Crumbs.

Reality is more cynical than the cynics? Ironic, no?

so beta

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