> One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating. While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them
My wife doesn't get it ... I often tell her that if both her and I signed up for a dating app, her inbox would be flooded with messages. Yet, if I were to message hundreds of women, I might get lucky and get a handful of responses. She thinks I'm exaggerating ...
I've been running online communities for years and this, as far as I can see, factual.
I've read somewhere, maybe multiple times, that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived. That sounds correct given the data I have.
I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years.
We don't talk too much about this but it's clear to me that it hurts them a lot, because it's not only about feeling desired, self-steem, or they can't fullfill their sexual desires.
It's that they don't have those moments of intimacy that you have with members of the oposite sex, when you're naked or just cuddling.
The only advice I've told them is to get out of any online stuff and hit bars. But they're in their 30s, their self-steem is already pretty low, and when I bring em somewhere it's pretty difficult to get it running. The times we've been around women, they get tired after a while and just want to grab me and go somewhere else.
The've had GFs and hookups from time to time (meaning maybe about 2 years), and from my POV the've been treated pretty badly.
IDK what to say, but I try to not think about it too much because it makes me sad.
In a past life I got pretty deep into trying to help guys like this.
There's a whole industry around it peddling advice that ranges from effective (yet impossible to implement for a broken person) to counter-productive and evil.
It's really very simple, but people just have massive amounts of negative programming that radiates out from them like a reverse pheromone.
Those who are hungry do not eat. You can't fake it, but letting go of fear and just talking to strangers in public flirting spaces (bar, club, maybe target, NOT WORK OR FRIENDS) over and over again while making no effort to hide one's sexual interest will eventually give one the appearance of non-attachment to sexual outcomes. Having a conversation with any kind of sexual implications while maintaining a stance of non-attachment to sexual outcomes is my definition of flirting.
The mindset (feel free to actually say this. it works):
"I think we should do sexy stuff together because it would be fun for both of us, and I'm happy to tell you that because even if you say no, I hope I've flattered you and spoken my truth and that feels good."
I'm glad I'm married and (hopefully forever) out of the game, because I can imagine it's even more difficult these days where harassment and creepiness is much more prominently on the radar. It can be a minefield. The difference between flirting (wanted attention) and creeping (unwanted attention) is entirely in the mind of the recipient. So you don't really know which one you've done until the recipient reacts either positively or negatively.
"while making no effort to hide one's sexual interest"
This is tricky, but key. If you hide your interest, you will most likely act weird.
And yes, rejection is part of the game and no problem. Unless of course - like you say - one is already broken. Then a simple rejection can be devastating of the remaining confidence.
Flirting is a game, but some never learned how to play. I also learned it quite late and remember the awkward teenage years and feel sorry for those who never got the chance. And nowdays it even seems harder.
Just understanding what many women are generally attracted to is a huge differentiator, worth quite a few points on the conventional attractiveness scale. If you're reading this, you probably come across to others as nice and inoffensive, which is actually a very good thing! But you do generally need to show off a little bit of a "wilder" side that's been properly tamed and made harmless, in a way that she can intuit. It's a big component of flirting of any sort.
Might be simple but still unattainable to a huge swath of guys. It's like trying to tell someone not to freak out before a job interview - just go there, be yourself and don't care about the outcome. Let me know how well that worked out...
The trick is to not be desperate for the job, and to schedule as many job interviews as humanly possible until it's just a thing you do[1]. Most people don't feel great after each rejection and so are not willing to put in the work.
1. The same strategy applies to public speaking, or product demos, or chairing a meeting, or systems design for people who feel they are not good at it. The human mind is incredibly adaptable and has great capacity for learning when exposed to new environments. The only exception is if the person has some kind of trauma or psychological wall and exposure harms them - in that case, I recommend talking to a professional first.
> Most people don't feel great after each rejection and so are not willing to put in the work.
Don't talk lightly about such things. Rejections are a known cause for suicides.
> The only exception is if the person has some kind of trauma or psychological wall and exposure harms them - in that case, I recommend talking to a professional first.
It's likely everybody had a rejection at least once. It's also likely a large percent didn't particularly enjoy the outcome. I don't think that so many people should seek professional help though - or it should be something very different from what we assume now.
There's a huge difference between "being rejected, and a bit bummed about it" and "being rejected, and being traumatized by it". The only way anybody gets good at anything is repeated failures. While learning to ice skate, you get some bruises from falling on your ass. Get up, dust yourself off, keep trying. If you fall down and break your arm, maybe get some professional help before trying again.
There could be an ocean of difference between failures learning to skate and failures learning to get dates, to the point it's not interesting to compare. At very least to some people.
> Don't talk lightly about such things. Rejections are a known cause for suicides.
If being rejected by a potential employer or potential sexual partner results in suicide ideation - I strongly recommend talking to a professional expeditiously.
A person in a healthy state of mind can be disappointed by rejection, but ought to realize that a self-fulfilling fear response while interacting with the potential employer/partner is unhelpful and take steps to mitigate future occurrences.
> If being rejected by a potential employer or potential sexual partner results in suicide ideation - I strongly recommend talking to a professional expeditiously.
Hmm...
> A person in a healthy state of mind can be disappointed by rejection, but ought to realize that a self-fulfilling fear response while interacting with the potential employer/partner is unhelpful and take steps to mitigate future occurrences.
Imagine you need to fly over a river to save your life, because you're being chased by a maniac with an axe. Would you fly?
No, because you can't. Person in a healthy etc. can realize that thing about fear response, but be unable to control that said response. Somewhat, but not quite, similar to being unable to hold breath voluntarily, for arbitrarily long time.
You might be right about the need talking to professional expeditiously. However many don't, and are ok, even though they pass through quite - to the point of those thoughts - dark area in their life. We know about some unfortunate outcomes of such situations; that doesn't mean all the rest have it easy.
> Imagine you need to fly over a river to save your life, because you're being chased by a maniac with an axe. Would you fly?
No, I would not - but if I survive the encounter, I would learn to swim under highly controlled circumstances (i.e. while not being chased by a maniac), and swim an increasing number of laps to help my endurance. That way I may have confidence to swim across raging river, if my life involved having to borrow axes from strangers near rivers.
Correct. If I had a cure I might still be doing it. Like I said, some people are broken. What I've described is more fundamental. It probably will be of more assistance to people doing okay with some hangups than people whose self esteem is not in a place where flirting can be an uplifting activity.
Edit:
-Therapy
-Dance classes (not for flirting, just having positive touch experiences)
Dance classes could be still a downlifting experience but yes, could still be beneficial, even though not by much. Some numbing could be achieved, when after downfall one reaches a plato where for some range of input conditions the output doesn't worsen.
I meant talk therapy. Therapy is tough because a good therapist is probably very expensive, and might be a major expense for someone.
Cheaper options would be trauma or addiction groups if those fit.
A lot of people have just horrible “truths” they absorbed from their upbringing that need to be deprogrammed. Framing this as a parental trauma and working through it in a group setting could be useful.
Some people have had success with MDMA or psilocybin
Increasing numbers of people don't drink--which rules out bars. And you seem to be suggesting actions with a hookup as the desired objective--not of much use for those who desire a relationship rather than a hookup.
By "club" do you mean hobby type things? It's perennial advice but it has the serious flaw that to a large degree you encounter the same people over and over, most of whom are too young/too old/not available.
I'm married so I'm not looking but as a game I have paid attention to the suitability of those I get to know--and the number of relationship prospects approximates zero.
"Increasing numbers of people don't drink--which rules out bars."
It is possible to not drink alcohol at a bar and still have fun, but I also never liked bars to meet people.
And "clubs", no he did not meant a "hobby thing", but a place where you can dance and enjoy music.
Dancing is a very old way of hooking up.
Back in time it was the village dance, where the young people got close. And this still works, either in formal settings like a dance studio - or free style on a dance floor.
Dancing is body language and you can signal to other people, whether you are interested, or not. And then you get close, or apart.
It is general advice. Even if you're taking it slowly, you need to somehow let the person you are interested in know that they will enjoy hooking up with you someday, or they won't stick around to wait for you.
Edit: I still need to emphasize the public element. Don’t let your co-workers and friends know you’re into them (at least don’t blame me if you do)
It's interesting to me. I have female friends in their 30s who go on tons of dates but reject pretty much all of them for any long-term relationship. The ones they seem to be in to tend to reject them after a couple of dates.
I'm not there in those interactions but I wonder how much of it is a mismatch between what you desire in a relationship and who you are attracted to in a person.
>It's interesting to me. I have female friends in their 30s who go on tons of dates but reject pretty much all of them for any long-term relationship. The ones they seem to be in to tend to reject them after a couple of dates.
This is simply the other side of the coin, "online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers"
What is happening is that in the same way most women get more attention than most men, the few men who do get attention get to pick and choose because all of the women are going for them.
Women are okay with sharing one desirable man (polygyny). It has been that way since humans exist, as evidenced by the different rate of reproductive success for men and women respectively, as recorded in our genome. This is stable from a biological and social standpoint, if the social environment is how we spent the last couple of hundreds of thousands of years: in clans and tribes, size below Dunbar's number. If you look closely, polygyny is making its comeback since the end of enforced monogamy.
For modern society, this return to acting out the ancestral environment makes everything unstable. I predict in my lifetime for depression and suicide to be overtaken in number by extreme bouts of violence and riots.
> wouldn't it be better for them to lower expectations?
There's two metrics here though which influence and confuse one another. Women get plenty of attention on the attractiveness side, but just because you can get laid doesn't mean you can get a relationship. It makes sense that if a lot of people are acting as suitors that you would then down select from this group. The problem is that on the woman's side you don't know if the suitor is looking for a relationship or just to get laid. Without a good metric for that, you can't properly down select and might just end up with a pool of only people that want to get laid. Especially if the primary initial selecting criteria is simply attractiveness (i.e. you're using an app). This is probably unsurprising considering in the digital world we often convince ourselves that we have stronger relationships because of tools like these (e.g. keeping up with friends more because Facebook) but in reality we don't because we are sacrificing the only meaningful tool to build and maintain relationships: physical time together.
Yes. But it takes time. Most importantly, women lose their ability to have children earlier than men but in their early 20s many of them are busy with other things and think they have a lot of time.
They get less desirable as time goes by so when they decide to ‘get serious’ at 35 it is already getting late
If this is the case then it would seem an easy problem to solve as men looking for relationships and not getting any responses should only have to message those 35 and older.
If they are young they are less established in a career which disqualifies them.
My take is that "age gap" relationships are difficult, even somebody who is 50 today grew up in a very different world than someone who is 27 on top of all the other issues about not outliving your partner too much, etc.
This is a proven dating strategy for around average value men. You present yourself as a provider beta looking for commitment, approach mid 30s to 40s women, establish a bond, bang them, and then ghost and move on to the next one. That sounds like a poor way to live to me, but it definitely works.
Tricky. In an environment where it takes time to collect information about competitiveness, updating of expectations is slow (and costly, because it is hard to be rational about this), there is a lot of randomness, and one's own competitiveness might be typically decreasing ... the slope of the expectation update might be not steep enough.
A common tendency is for women to become accustomed to the type of men she can find for casual sex online, it's rough to go from dating the top few to an average partner.
I'm sure they are aware of the situation as well as their own biological clock and are acting according to their desires. Unfortunately we have to just let people make their own decisions in the realm of dating. Maybe the future is common egg freezing or artificial wombs and people can delay serious families until their 40s or 50s.
That's because 80% of the women are chasing 20% of the men.
Okcupids data showed this in nice clear charts.
The numbers invert as you get closer to 40. Single women at 40 are desperate, single men at 40 have a jaded, and quite accurate, view of the majority of women.
It's really easy for them to do that with the massive quantity of men to choose from. It's a kid in a candy store. They (women friends and dates I spoke to in this big city) tend to whine about bad dates and 'I want to delete this app' but it's what happens when you get 10 matches per day and you have to quickly select who to give a chance.
Then they meet someone, it's hard to drop everything if there's still more matches you haven't met yet.
"what you desire in a relationship and who you are attracted to in a person. "
What the head wants and what the heart wants ...
I am not sure, if this is a new thing, but there quite some social norms and expectations, that are impossible to fullfill (for both sides), creating unfulfillment and then drama.
I cannot say, that I know many happy couples. I met some and trying to work on my relationship, but it is really, really hard. Much harder, than I thought it is supposed to be.
Many women struggle with how the set of men that are willing to have sex with them is a much larger set than that of men who are willing to commit to them. The size of the set intersection thereof declines precipitously as women age too.
It's kinda curious that women emphasize commitability as a desirable trait, yet they agree and understand that commits could and should be a rare thing.
What about that majority of cases when a woman doesn't want a commit? People grow to sexual age in 18 and can be not committed until much later, so in between they can/should/want to have less consequential encounters, right? So what about that majority of cases, do women still struggle when they are in the same situation - when they would have sex but unwilling to commit?
Sorry for going off on a tangent, but I think this needs correction. By that age, puberty is already over. For girls, onset of puberty is 10, reproductive maturity is 14.
It could be that you mean something else, namely a related social/legal construct, but that does not seem likely to me because of the word "grow".
yeah 18 has more to do with the experience and emotional maturity necessary to navigate the society we've built than it does with biological maturity. Our private parts are ready to go long before our 18th birthday, which is obvious from the ultra hormone shot that high-schoolers get. On the other hand, full cognitive maturity isn't complete until long after that birthday. It seems almost like the line at 18 is purely for practical reasons around the need for workers than it is due to any scientific understanding of the way humans work.
"I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years."
I have a friends like this. One solution a couple of them have found is dating internationally. Not via "mail-order" services though. It was sort of a situation where they had a domestic friend who had friends or relatives abroad who were looking for a US marriage. So there was some trust there, and it was set up sort of like an arranged marriage. A lot of people hate on arraigned marriages, but the older I get, the more they make sense.
The international dating absolutely ruins dating for local guys. Look into Eastern Europe or even better, Thailand.
Also, is it really long term solution to loneliness? If only motivation for marriage was to get the attractive citezenship, what will hold the marriage after it's done? Anecdotally, internet is full of stories of "mail-brides", who divorce the men and take a sweet part of his assets with it.
There are prenups, which I believe would be wise for any couple to create (together), and especially important in this type of arrangement.
As I said, this isn't through a mail order service. This is via friends of friends. The marriage would not just be for citizenship. Just like the arranged marriages I mentioned, there would be an element of matchmaking via the intermediary (the mutual friend in this case, or the two families in a traditional arrangement) that has a true belief that the two people would get along well together and share similar values. Then you would have visits and such to see how you liked the other person.
But yes, I see how that can create problems in specific locales. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how the problem can be solved universally.
They can't override prenups. They can invalidate prenups, or portions of the prenup for specific reasons. I couldn't find the stats that you mentioned. I would guess that number included specific provisions that were invalidates, such as custody arrangements, which are outside the scope of a prenup.
Yeah, again, they can invalidate portions of the prenup for specific reasons. In the case of second look, that reason would be if the terms are considered unreasonable at the time of divorce. So it is fairly open ended due to "reasonable" being subjective based on the judge (or master) that you get. But the use of this doctrine is supposed to be pretty limited and should only be applied if the terms were egregiously lopsided or a significant life event occurred (disabled spouse).
I would strongly discourage fishing in international waters. The basic problem is that there is a huge incentive for such women to pretend interest when what they really want is the green card. The balance of what each brings to the table shifts considerably once the permanent green card is issued.
Note that this is *not* to say that international relationships can't work--I've seen some that do (including my own) but I do not know of one that didn't involve one person being in the other's country already (although I would not rule out both people being in a third country, I just don't know any such.)
yeah internationally traveling to date I encourage it.
even if it's just for short term flings.
a lot of average guys tend to get overlooked with online dating, and don't have the cojones to approach their local women.
whereas if it's international - you become interesting - just by being someone a woman doesn't interact with on a daily basis i.e you not the local loser. so chances of her fucking you for the "wow" factor are higher than if you were a local.
At minimum I think most people (the bottom ~90% dating-success-wise, both men and women) in our society would be better off with arranged marriages compared to our current cultural hellscape.
The problem is no one thinks they're in the bottom 90% of anything.
Yeah, mindset is a huge component to this. I think the media has exasperated the problem through idealized fantasy which does not match reality. I think people tend to have high expectations of a match, but don't hold themselves to the same standards.
As an example, I've had fat/obese friends say they wouldn't date a fat girl... Or friends that expect the man to pay for everything like it's 1950 and make grand gestures like in the movies.. what do they expect then?
Just like porn ruins actual sex for so many young men, romantic movies of all types ruin relationships for so many young women. Smut novels sell millions of copies a year to women of all ages so even if women intellectually know its 'not real' it becomes their default internal vocabulary.
Re: paying for everything. A lot of women want to step outside of their own traditional gender role but have a man firmly inside his.
There's a somewhat well-known series on HBO in USA, called Game of Thrones. A character there, Tyrion Lannister, who's a kind of a nerd, describes how he lost virginity in staged encounter with a paid woman.
It could be hard to figure out what would be better - this kind of initiation with associated large risk of getting emotionally attached to the paid person, or staying virgin for years and years, having no comparative to peers experience and somewhat falling more behind, so having to dig out from deeper and deeper pit. So I wouldn't with certainty recommend looking for paid services to get initial experience, even though that could - not always - simplify subsequent interactions. Even though such an approach could be sufficiently different for men vs. women.
Agree. Arranged marriages worked for generations. And to me it looks like a perfect mechanism to tame hormone-induced young people, who, en masse, hurt not only themselves but whole society.
Existed, sure. Whether they “work” or not is... well, for most of history no one was gathering data, but arranged marriage still exists now, and there is evidence linking it to higher rates of suicide, for women particularly.
There's a big statistical problem here--these days the things shown to relate to a relationship "working" are basically reasons not to dissolve failed relationships. Lots of couples stay together but are basically financially-linked roommates.
> I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years.
While I think that globally the sentiment about this is true (market is driven by women), I also had many average-looking, intellectually stimulating male friends that said "that girl is too ugly".
I've fallen for plenty of women who I was not initially sexually attracted to but as I spent more time with them they became so. Not because they looked any different, but because emotional bonds formed. So called "inner beauty." I'm confident this is an extremely common experience for men and women alike. The issue is that this will never happen through a dating app.
> I also had many average-looking, intellectually stimulating male friends that said "that girl is too ugly".
That however doesn't mean that male friends would rule out going with said girl.
There's the "wisdom" which summarizes the idea that there are no ugly women. It's in other words the same idea as above - for vast majority of women men would still go with them.
I've been married for 8 years so not sure anyone should care about my advice, but I wouldn't suggest going to bars or clubs at all. I know there are exceptions, but for the most part it's hard to think of an environment where a nerdy introverted person will be perceived as lower status.
When I learned to play poker, one of the key insights was that beyond the point of basic competence, literally the most important factor is table selection, and second most important is seat selection. It doesn't matter how good of a player you are if you're in a game with an even better player on your left. Similarly, you don't have to be very good to make a lot of money if you can find a terrible player and sit to their left.
I think this applies to dating and social skills more generally. While it's great to occasionally get out of your comfort zone, you're more likely to have success socially and romantically in settings where you feel in your element. The more comfortable you are and the more you're authentically enjoying yourself, the more attractive you'll appear to others. So unless you really like bars and clubs, don't go to them--or at least look for places with a vibe that suits you, not places where you feel like a loser. The best bet is to somehow find the overlap in the venn diagram of 'places/activities you authentically enjoy' and 'places where single women are present'.
They aren't always easy to find and it might take some work to arrange these types of settings if you don't have access to any that already exist, but at the same time, anyone can host a game night or book club or running group etc. and start promoting and networking to get people involved.
Seconded. And going to a bar with the goal of finding romantic partners makes you sound particularly idiotic when you loosen up a bit. That's why many approaches here, which assume rational part, especially - importantly - at the moment of human-touchness, e.g. when you're actually communicating with potential partners, can fail dramatically. Imagine you'd drink enough and start broadcasting a little your ideas which brought you - especially if you're a nerd - to the bar. You're going to have spectacular, epic what-they-say. And if you don't loosen up, you're perceived as incincere, somebody who's hiding something, likely nasty, behind them and trying to catch strangers in who knows which schemes.
Most women aren't intimidated by intelligence. They're turned off by condescending assholes who constantly recite facts and contradict others instead of carrying on a normal conversation.
For most of my life, I have been one of those guys who were like your friends. The point about intimacy hit hard - I have never seen such a simple point expressed so beautifully.
Aren't bars similar to dating sites? A forum for men to compete with other men for women. I would think they'd have better luck with group activities (rec sports, craft/hobby stuff) or online groups devoted to something (restaurant enthusiasts, etc).
Yes, but the crucial difference is that online you're competing with everyone else in your city, in a bar you're only competing with the other guys in the bar.
Nightclubs, yeah, most bars aren't nightclubs though.
Bars are a fairly decent place for low stakes socialization, at the very least.
In person dynamics are just different - I met my husband in a bar. At the time neither of us were looking to date anyone for various reasons but we happened to get chatting and our chemistry was immediately apparent. If he were exactly the same person but I first "met" him as a dating profile on the screen I almost certainly would have passed.
Groups could be drinking at someone's house. They're paying money and arranging transportation to be doing their group drinking in public. It's rude not to engage with them.
There is much less competition in a bar. Very rarely would an attractive guy in a bar be picking up 3 or 4 women at the same time. So those women would be forced to not choose anyone, or choose a different man. Next, an attractive man can only "court" a very small actual number of women in a physical real time setting, vs online.
Not really the same at all. People in bars tend to be much more willing to engage with others than they are on the apps. Its very easy to set insanely high standards when the next person is only a swipe away.. compared to in person you can see 'these are all of my options so pick someone and see how it goes'
Let me recommend how I met my wife: Reddit! I posted, not on the main /r4r which moves quickly, but a more niche one. The fact that I posted is key: Women on Reddit are inundated with tons of PMs when they post. However, there are a ton of both men and women who browse those subreddits but do not post themselves. And unlike a dating app, which is both algorithmically driven and focused on attractiveness, Reddit provies you a textbox with which you can differentiate yourself in whatever way makes you you.
> It's that they don't have those moments of intimacy that you have with members of the oposite sex, when you're naked or just cuddling.
I have not read the paper yet so I don't know if this idea was captured but I agree the issue is not only about the sex, it's also (maybe even moreso) about intimacy and connection.
I wonder to what degree this is an issue brought on by a higher level of education and awareness. I mean there are plenty of loveless marriages and I expect the further in the past you go the more common this was. I can not imagine that at the time when marriages were usually arranged, mostly for economic reasons, there was much love unless they were lucky. There was also just so much inequality contributing to this. I can believe many people were not aware better was possible.
Have people become aware that relationships can be more and now find it impossible to settle for less?
Edit, just to make it clear, is not necessarily a bad thing. Changing the expectation about what a relationship should be towards one where more things are valued is a good thing. It does however mean we are suffering the consequences of being in the transition period between two value systems.
Being inexperienced in your 30s as a man is game over. Sorry to put it bluntly but for those guys there isn't a path that leads to a relationship or real intimacy of any kind.
> I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me.
So, I promise I'm not just picking on the phrasing (though yeah, the phrasing is pretty bad).
I find it amazing that you went through that whole discussion about the perspective of your seemingly-hetero-male-only social environment without once recognizing that intimacy is a two-way transaction and that the other party needs to get something in return. Everyone, including women, wants a satisfying relationship. And most people aren't getting one at any given moment.
And it doesn't seem like any part of your calculus is how to square those perspectives? Your whole comment is about women in some sense, but the only time their perspective even enters the discussion is in one sentence where you talk about compelling them to like you out of physical desire?
And you don't think this might be part of the reason your negotiations are failing? Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first. Why do you think it should work any different here?
You seem to be missing the point that has been made many times here that these studies and reports are demonstrating that a significant number of ordinary men are not even getting to the point they can negotiate a "transaction".
The imbalance since the onset of online dating is huge and it and its dismissal with implied equivalence on each side is a real problem for society.
Even with that imbalance what the OP said is entirely correct. You can't dismiss the feelings of the other partner in a potential romantic relationship and view it as transactional. If someone does it's probably a large part of why they have issues finding one. Even beyond the initial ability to actually speak to someone of the opposite sex.
This is overstating the case. This can all be measured. Statistics like median number of partners, age at marriage, etc... are indeed all trending downward and growing more asymmetric between men and women. The linked article cites a few studies like this. But it's not a "huge" effect.
This is a meme, created largely by feedback communities like the incel folks. Note, FWIW, the Betteridge question mark in the title of the linked paper. Contra everyone's assumptions here, it does not seem to be presenting solid evidence for a "public health problem".
It works out horribly. In China men at the lower end of the economic scale have effectively no chance of finding anyone and many do not even try because the cost is too high. That causes social unrest.
> What happens to a society that has too many men? In this provocative book, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer argue that, historically, high male-to-female ratios often trigger domestic and international violence. Most violent crime is committed by young unmarried males who lack stable social bonds. Although there is not always a direct cause-and-effect relationship, these surplus men often play a crucial role in making violence prevalent within society. Governments sometimes respond to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects. Countries with high male-to-female ratios also tend to develop authoritarian political systems.
> Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, is a highlight in Chinese society. But for many young people, the joy of vacation and family reunion is mixed with questions from parents and relatives about their achievements in the past year, including about their relationships.
> This is a particularly stressful occasion for single men who – unless they choose to rent a fake partner or have a stroke of luck at the local marriage “market” - are forced to face the miserable fate of singlehood.
> These involuntary bachelors, who fail to add fruit to their family tree are often referred to as “bare branches”, or guanggun. And the Chinese state has recently started to worry about the dire demographic trend posed by the growing number of bare branches.
> The 2010 national census data suggests that 24.7% Chinese men above the age of 15 have never been married, while 18.5% of women in the same age group remain unwed.
> Your whole comment is about women in some sense, but the only time their perspective even enters the discussion is in one sentence where you talk about compelling them to like you out of physical desire?
Presumably what spaniard89277 means is "I have talked to long-term-single men and this is what I think their aggregate perspective is, I don't know many long-term-single women so I don't really know their perspective"
After all, if he knew a lot of single people of both genders, presumably he'd point them at one another.
Your right about the two-sided thing. The key to successful dating is understanding the woman's perspective. Most men think women should act like them and want to have meaningless sex right away. No, that's not how it works. For most women who are going to have more than a one night stand, sex is a big deal and an enormous emotional investment. I could go on, but this is HN not a dating advice subreddit.
> The key to successful dating is understanding the woman's perspective.
Understanding could be required, but sufficiently not sufficient condition. That understanding should have a chance to be demonstrated - and the choice of actions, given highly unpredictable short-term decision making, could easily make or break the transaction.
I say "could be", even though I seen cases where that was completely bypassed - only the form was in place, and one side of the transaction remained under wrong assumptions long after the initial actions had place.
FWIW: the point works fine without generalisms about sex or whatever. My point was really that 90% of incel culture is just pure self-centered lack of empathy. If you aren't interested in the lived experience of your "target" and are focused only on what you want "from" them, you're not going to be successful.
And to repeat: that same logic is identical to sales, which is another area most incels are extremely bad at.
Of course intimacy is a two-way transaction. It's also a thing where the chain of events and actions happen, and there are many possible breaking points, which at beast move the interaction to square one. So to summarize in short words, "make women like me" means passing this chain of events - from men's point of view - so that there's a passable chance to actually complete the transaction. Note that the situation is hardly symmetrical for men vs. women - I'd argue men are much more forgiving and willing to continue the chain of actions should something go sufficiently unexpected, in the wrong enough way.
I would guess you don't see the attempt to square the perspectives because it could be too obvious to talk about. Like, when we talk about programming we usually assume ability to handle basic addition of numbers under a hundred, which comes handy - and similarly when we talk about relationships we assume the two-wayness just the same, there's no need to talk about it.
> Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first.
This could vary widely. One can study somebody else for long time - see e.g. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070735/ The Sting, where the conspirators take time to study the ways their counterparts behave. Or in other case one could fly by the seat of your pants on a dance floor, when he sees a woman partner for some minutes at best. There could be little opportunities to get to know the other side better though - Tinder illustrates that when you make a split-second decision having barely even studied the image on the screen, not saying anything about the person themselves.
> Why do you think it should work any different here?
I agree with this. The importance of being okay-looking and intellectually stimulating are small compared to the importance of being a good emotional communicator, self aware, reciprocating in conversation etc.
I'd disagree regarding okay-looking - that could be surprisingly more important than assumed. Without looks which make enough of a pause many other qualities are worth little.
In my experience, looks matter to men a lot more than they matter to women. Of course some level of attraction is necessary but (again in my limited experience) women are far more willing to go for an average-looking partner with a great personality than men are.
> and when I bring em somewhere it's pretty difficult to get it running
How much time do these friends spend in social situations with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend?
I don't know your friends, but have known people in similar situations. In all those cases, their were others in our social circles who looked worse "on paper" but had no real difficulties here - it wasn't really about attractiveness or intelligence, but about behavior and/or expectations.
> How much time do these friends spend in social situations with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend?
Sometimes it's all available time. Which could be really small or none at all.
Behavior could be significantly affected by proximity with women, when you're in certain age and experience. It's described in the literature, for here it could be said a social - social - situation with women where the goal isn't to get laid/find a girlfriend - and where such goal doesn't quickly appear and supersedes whatever other goals there were - could be rare to find.
What norms have to do with this? Imagine that whenever a man is in proximity of women it's like a loud signal which doesn't go away, and he needs to concentrate on anything else to avoid following the noise. It's irrelevant which cultural norms are around.
Cultural norm meaning it is normal to be in social contexts with mixed groups of genders without it being primarily sexual, and generally expected of people. There are countries and cultures where this is not true, which makes mixed gender interactions different.
> Imagine that whenever a man is in proximity of women it's like a loud signal which doesn't go away,
This is not normal, and may point to deeper problems.
I dont think most people realize how big a deal location is. Move to a big city in the north east (NYC is the best) and you will have better luck than the west coast or midwest. The numbers favor men in those locations.
Without or with it leads to all kind of emotional problems.
So to be alone isnt that bad.
And relations are not always about sex, the most stable relations are based upon understanding and care friendship. Sure sex is something but after the kids do people still want to live like rabbits, well there much more in life than sex.
The media might make you think peole have sex every day or so, thats bullshit some relations are not based on sex at all but are by all means perfect relastions. (some people dont enjoy sex, or because of medical reasons).
If you want a happy life enjoy other peoples smile, go to places where people smile, enjoy your life yourself visit places. There is no perfect face or figure. And stay away from people who build their life on consumables as drugs or alcoholics a its reciepe for disaster.
Dont try to search for it, not online either, accidents just happen ;)
To be fair this is not entirely due to social dynamics but rather due to MatchGroup companies following identical monetization patterns. They’re just capitalizing on male desperation and artificially widening or narrowing the gap depending on how much you pay.
If you observe the actual dating climate it’s nowhere near this bad and in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1.
Rather than a social problem this is an economic problem, and as dystopian as it sounds I personally think the solution here is a non-profit or even govt sponsored dating app. It would be stupidly easy to do this and also add a whole lot more trust (bad actors may face real consequences), which is one of the other huge reasons why dating apps struggle with getting women into their app.
I don't know if that's true. From most data I've seen women's preferences skew towards a small percentage of men. i.e. most women want the same guys, which are the small minority. This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.
>This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.
Well... kind of. Except that men also tend to all be looking at the same pool of younger women, while women tend to look for men closer to their own age, according to OKCupid's data.
There is a big difference between what they see as "the best" and what they are looking at. If a 42 yo man sees a good looking 30 year old on a dating app he is quite unlikely to disregard her simply because she is not 20.
I wonder about the actual numbers here, and how they vary between cultures, regions, age groups, etc. From what I see from my single female friends 20% is waaay too high. Not trying to be a jerk here, just observation.
Singling out dating apps, or worse a single company thinking their monopoly created the problem, is missing the forest for the trees.
The social dynamic exists independent of dating apps which monetize and exploit it.
The dynamic is the same in real life, for example at a nightclub where women drink for free, promoters who bring them get paid per girl, and lonely men pay $40 cover for a chance to shoot their shot
If dynamic in real life is 1:2 then it’s 1:1000 on dating apps. Also I would actually blame MatchGroup here, they’ve been fighting dating apps with better models for years, every company they swallow has adopted the same bad ethics (case and point Hinge), and the only company that’s managed to stay afloat away from them (Bumble) is suing them. They are most definitely a major component of the problem
> The social dynamic exists independent of dating apps which monetize and exploit it.
> The dynamic is the same in real life...
While I agree it isn't unique to OLD, it's vastly different to real life. In real life you can strike up a conversation with someone, become friends, develop feelings, and end up in a relationship weeks/months/years down the line.
The equivalent to this is that the more focus the app your own has on "hookup", or "sex", the worse the ratios get.
Tinder would be more comparable to a swinger club in this regard. Swinger clubs will charge single dudes well over 100$ for that same chance, and those guys will have to try to get lucky with predominantly older couples. Usually these dudes will find that their success levels go up if they are bisexual too. (The reasons for that are left as an exercise for the reader)
One difference with online dating is that people tend to objective and quantify the other person more easily. In person, there tends to be fewer traits known before getting to know the person. Online, you have a dossier that causes more candidates to be rejected without a chance to get to know then.
In some ways this is great because you don't waste your time, or their's, if there's a serious incompatibility. But I think it can also be used negatively when people are too picky. Sure, there are people who are too picky in real life, but those snap judgements are based just on what you can see. The absence of other information can make someone go, "Ok, I'll give them a shot even if they're average looking because maybe they're interesting/mysterious/etc".
I'm not sure that's true. The traits "known" are more subversive. Did you meet at a country/city club? At a gym? An upscale restaurant or bar? Do you have an accent? What are you wearing? What are you drinking? What do your friends look like? How do you carry a conversation? What unconscious body language and facial cues do you communicate?
I'm willing to bet that I could reliably predict 80%+ of whatever profile attributes you fill out online, with a 2 minute conversation and good look at you.
Aha! But that's the point. A 2 minute conversation can convey a lot about the person which a glance at a profile (or algorithmic filter) never could. That can produce the interest or chemistry.
> I'm willing to bet that I could reliably predict 80%+ of whatever profile attributes you fill out online, with a 2 minute conversation and good look at you.
Hahaha—I have a pretty good track record at the game, "spot the software industry dude" on hiking trails. We have a certain look and demeanor. Our preference for conspicuously-expensive outdoor gear from the right brands (not "hick" or "red" brands) does make it relatively easy as such games go, though.
There was an article a few years ago saying that in Manhattan women outnumber men, and that led to men needing to compete less there, so yeah probably economics related.
But a gov-sponsored app? No way. It's bad enough they have your whole financial/employment history (IRS), but to add your health (medicare/aid) and now dating/sexual histories too? What's left that you can keep private? Sorry, bad idea there.
I hear you on privacy, but would you rather the data be given to MatchGroup who can sell and use that as they wish, or to the government that at least has an incredible amount of oversight and has to go thru greatly transparent lengths to move data? Having worked in both the gov and commercial spaces for a while I’d definitely say govt agencies are much, much, much more careful about how they handle sensitive information.
Yup, if I were in the dating market I would definitely favor a government system. Not only do I trust the government more with data privacy (not that they are good, it's just they are way beyond private enterprise), but they have the data to weed out most of the junk. There wouldn't be a bunch of bots, there wouldn't be a bunch of sex workers who just create a new profile when the old one is banned etc.
(And I would like to see government job boards, also, for basically the same reasons.)
They might be more bureaucratic about your data, but I wouldn't says it's really any safer. Even places with sensitive info like OPM have been hacked. I think the IRS had a leak at one point too, but don't remember now.
I’ve also worked in gov. And they’re not very good at it either, OPM breach especially was pretty bad, and that’s it’s own workforce: the most protected set of people under any government.
Gov does default to classifying documents, if that’s what you’re talking about, which leads to it being very secretive; the opposite of transparent. See the Biden/Trump cavalier treatment of such documents - honestly probably none are actually important anyway.
But again the IRS, which deals with everyone most directly (more than say intel documents) is notoriously bad and behind the times at it’s computer systems.
MatchGroup might sell your data to a company for ads and the like, but it’s opt in, and one of several. When’s the last time government did something opt-in?
Who knows, the ads might be useful sometimes. Giving politicians and bureaucrats access to more information about you in another centralized db somewhere is a recipe for disaster, and even if they are angels, it’ll be a huge target for others!
> in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1
I don't know the stats but on places like Blind there's a lot of anecdotes about the dating scene favoring men in NYC and favoring women in SF, due to the gender balances.
Having seen data that most have not (believe me or don't, but if you want to take a chance on a random anon user I would say I can give a more data-informed take on this exact issue than 99.9% of people), it's really not as dramatic of an effect as lonely people would like to pretend, but even subtle as it is numerically, it does affect the feeling. An extra cup of water still feels like a world of difference if you're in a desert.
Possibly, as disgusting as it sounds this is a pretty good use case for web3. Federate identity via blockchain to prevent bad actors, require a $1 or so NFT to use the app to prevent scammers from mass-botting, and some regular security and privacy measures = you’re good to go
Expanding user graphs for matches across multiple nodes isn’t just easy, it’s actually way more efficient too. Have nodes calculate match likelihood among their users and verify they’re using the same algorithm with a simple hash. Then you’ve reduced getting matches for user X from the entire population Y (calculating distance, applying filters, and then ordering by compatibility, all expensive tasks) to getting matches for user X from nodes N that are purposely geolocated nearby reducing the search space even more.
Basically not only could you do this open-source and decentralized, it would actually be more secure, safer, and way better both accuracy wise and cost wise at finding matches.
Interesting, but if the information's public, that's a no go. Nobody wants their personal information out there. And seeing all of the information before you submit your own profile is problematic, especially if the algorithm's known and reproducible. I'm afraid you'd have a system where you could declare "a great match" to any targeted account for the cost of $1. Worse, you're now snagged in the canonical smart contract problem: you can't fix problems in the algorithm anymore. How do you tune the dang thing after release?
Please tell me you are joking. The cryptolibertarian crowd is not usually seen as the most trustworthy especially when in comes to topics like dating. To put it very mildly.
Can't speak for NYC but this is not true for the west coast tech hubs (SF, Seattle, Portland). In these places, even 300K per year tech wealth isn't enough to make one attractive to the opposite sex.
I've talked about it on other threads but where and how you earn your money matters. 300K per year as a lawyer = sexy and powerful. Even "don draper" vibes. 300K as a SWE? The moment you mention this at a bar the girl knows you went to university courses that averaged 9 men to 1 woman. They know you're likely on the ASD spectrum. The know "the odds are good but the goods are odd".
This is why blind is filled with posts by high earning folks who can't ever get a single date. It's hard out there and thinking that you can beta-bux your way out of it in a west coast city isn't going to work out for you.
Its because youre not a rare commodity and because society has shifted from family-building to endless dating. Big salaries work wonders for dating in relatively not that well off environments, if you had a salary like that and lived in Mobile Alabama, or like Slovakia I am sure you would be a hot cake there, but bay area or LA or NYC it doesnt really matter. What matters is whether you have the romancing vibes and whether youre an exciting partner. I highly suggest you go travel somewhere for like a few months and totally immerse yourself in the culture and try dating, it will be a paradigm shift for you. Places like Argentina or Brazil or Mexico, just make sure you research whether Americans are accepted and try dating there, it will blow your mind.
Having a lot of money is correlated with personality traits that are attractive, because those traits facilitate accumulating money. You are conflating correlation and causation. Lucking into money because you happen to work in tech is not evidence of quality dating material ipso facto.
It is not hard to get a date on the west coast on $300k as a tech person, as long as you have more to offer than just that.
Yeah, there's rightly a lot of concern over the power of the big social media monopolies and dating apps don't seem to get the same level of scrutiny.
Ultimately you decide who you want to date, but in scenarios where most people meet through apps, those apps have a lot of influence over who meets who. Nobody knows how the matching algorithms work, all we see is the effects and a mountain of anecdotal evidence that some men are having a difficult time finding partners.
I've lived in big cities like that and I can tell you its still pretty much the same thing. Even though I hate this word but I had been what some consider a pick up artist before I got married, although a quite successful one. My n-count is in the higher double digits and I've dated a a "Miss" beauty pageant winner from an eastern european country that competed in the Miss Universe.
There's endless science that supports why this happens though. In order to understand why this exists we have to go back in history. For every single man that reproduced, theres 10 other women that reproduced [1]. That means that a significant percent of the male population died without having any offspring, unlike the female population which could always find a partner. On the other hand, polyginy has always been practiced throughout the world universally pretty much everywhere in most cultures, especially by men of influence and power, unlike polyandry which is quite rare [2]
The theory goes that evolutionary speaking, women try to find the best mating partner (most well-off, most influencing, most powerful etc) in order to secure the best future for their offspring to grow up healthy, without any regard whether that man already has other offspring or partners. This is also supported by the fact that women 100% know that the offspring is in fact theirs since they gave birth to them, unlike men which have zero assurance that the kid is in fact theirs. And this is why for most of recorded history premarital sex for women in civilized societies was a big no no up until like the 1950s that started to change in the western world.
So dating apps create this perfect environment where choice is abundant, so men take their shot on everybody, and girls only choose the most handsomest, most well-off guys on there. Its similar to a big high school environment, where most of the popular pretty girls from all years and generations would date a dozen guys in the sports teams and just swap around every few months. In high school and college I was in a similar situation, and girls were in fact excited that I was so experienced and that I was seeing other girls at the same time.
On dating apps most men get somewhere like 0-4 matches a week and most women get somewhere like 100-1000. That’s a 25x difference best-case scenario and often it’s over 100x. Which is kind of insane considering there are about 50/50 men to women ratio in real life.
People say “the 20% top men get 80% of matches” but it’s worse than that. The 20% top men may get something reasonable like 3-4 matches a day, but your average women is getting something crazy like 1 match every 15 minutes.
Because a lot of men like to swipe right on nearly everyone and buy passes which get them unlimited swipes. And most women get extremely choosy and swipe right on only the super handsome nearly-perfect men, but you can’t even blame them when they have literally 1,000 matches.
So dating apps are a waste of time, much better to go out and talk to girls in real life and get yourself out of the synthetic environment apps like Tinder create. You'll have much easier time.
> So dating apps are a waste of time, much better to go out and talk to girls in real life and get yourself out of the synthetic environment apps like Tinder create.
Given your self-description, you're probably not understanding the problem from the men side. The problem is - how, specifically, to go out and talk to girls in real life.
As Elon Musk says, let this sink in. We're talking here about modern times, where people have less opportunity to contact each other - and the problem existed way before, now it only became harder. The main chunk of the problem is that it's unclear how to arrange for a lot - enough - opportunities to talk to girls in real life so that the results would be sufficient.
I feel like dating apps created this problem, the same way social media made everyone lonely and depressed by "connecting everyone". There's thousands of ways to talk to girls, and millions of resources and guides and books on how to do it, yet people do it less and less thinking dating apps will produce results.
I agree with the sentiment that dating apps have changed the dating landscape and have made it easier for people to connect with potential partners. However, this has also led to an overabundance of options and a culture of instant gratification, where people expect to find the perfect match with minimal effort. As a result, many people may become reliant on dating apps and may not put in the effort to meet potential partners in real life.
But the fact is, there are thousands of ways to talk to girls, and millions of resources and guides and books on how to do it, yet people do it less and less thinking dating apps will produce results.
We should not forget that building a social circle, joining clubs or groups, and participating in activities that align with your interests are all great ways to meet new people. Additionally, working on building social skills and confidence can also help in real-life interactions. And not all dating apps are created equal, and some may have a higher success rate for men than others. Some apps or websites are geared towards specific interests or demographics, and targeting these may increase your chances of success.
tl;dr dating apps can be a useful tool, but they should not be the only way to meet potential partners. It's important to actively seek out opportunities to meet new people in real life and to put in the effort to build genuine connections.
There's nothing dystopian in a non-profit dating service. If anything it is very dystopian that we allow for-profit companies to get involved in something so delicate!
From what I've gathered by listening to women, there are fundamentally different problems. "Attention" is not valuable in itself. Getting spammed with dick pics is about as appealing as any other kind of spam. No one looks in their spam folder and thinks "Gosh, all of these advertisers think I have money to burn! What a great compliment!". It doesn't show any personal interest. It's not a sign that the other person is going to treat you like a human being instead of a sentient (flesh-)wallet.
The difference in experiences starts early in life. For boys, girls showing interest in them is often an exciting and empowering experience. For girls, often as not, the first sign of sexual interest is a creepy older man making uncomfortable comments at them when they're 11 years old. IIRC this shows up in mental health statistics -- boys who start puberty earlier tend to do better; girls who start puberty earlier tend to do worse. And of course there are different social standards applied to men's and women's sexuality.
Women also have much bigger safety concerns than men do, and have a harder time getting anything done about attacks afterwards.
I think all of this does make it harder for women to understand the destructive loneliness that a lot of men (particularly young men) face. I've been there, and I remember that trying to talk about with my female friends was a frustrating experience. But over time I've come to see that women don't really have it any better than we do. We're wandering through a desert looking for an oasis; they're swimming through a lake of garbage looking for an intact water bottle.
> We're wandering through a desert looking for an oasis; they're swimming through a lake of garbage looking for an intact water bottle.
I think it's more like, we're both in a corner store and while many men can't afford something to eat, though it's right in front of them; women won't stop looking before they find Caviar and a bottle of Champaign.
> The difference in experiences starts early in life. For boys, girls showing interest in them is often an exciting and empowering experience.
Hence, if you're going to try and show interest in a woman, do it in a way that's clearly going to be interesting, exciting and empowering to her, even if she doesn't seem to reciprocate sexually. (Which in practice means you'll need to show genuine social interest and friendship to her, combined with a modicum of sexual interest that's demonstrably connoted as non-threatening. Mostly by showing yourself off as sexually attractive and attainable, and leaving it at that. Yes, it's very unintuitive from a male POV - many males will reject this approach as weak. But a neutral assessment of strategy says it will work, and give women what they're mostly looking for.)
It's not easy, but it should be your goal. Do you think most guys (or even most women, perhaps) have ever paid the least bit of attention to being interesting and exciting to their prospective partners, much less empowering them? Even with people you genuinely like and care for, it's not something you'd know to strive for intuitively. So the bar is not that high.
> Do you think most guys (or even most women, perhaps) have ever paid the least bit of attention to being interesting and exciting to their prospective partners, much less empowering them?
I know for sure that a lot of men, significant percent of my single friends, actually tried that for years, with little to no effect. Seems like when a woman needs the man to be interesting and exciting, she wants some non-trivial specifics which are actually hard to either understand or achieve.
> So the bar is not that high.
Would you think that this whole situation the article describing happens while the bar is not that high? Do you think the problem is illusory? Or the society as a whole just doesn't know some rather simple to make and simple to understand actions?
> Or the society as a whole just doesn't know some rather simple to make and simple to understand actions?
Yes, society as a whole does not care in the least about giving people viable social "scripts" by which they might get to know each other and pursue intimacy in safe, healthy and effective ways.
(Of course, the consequences of this lack become all the more apparent when ludicrous excuses are put forth to minimize or justify serious coercive and predatory behavior. Teach people to relate to each other in better ways, and you'll also deprive dangerous predators of the excuses they like to fall back on.)
> Yes, society as a whole does not care in the least about giving people viable social "scripts" by which they might get to know each other and pursue intimacy in safe, healthy and effective ways.
The question effectively was, do you know a smart thing the majority of the rest of people doesn't know - and that is for a problem which is older than all of us here. Seems like you believe you do but can't explain :( .
The problem with dating apps is that there is an inherent divide, and Match Group (the company that owns pretty much all online dating apps) actively exploits this. Lonely men are deliberately targeted and charged more for services. It may seem silly or nonsensical from above, but for many young men apps like Tinder are the only way of finding "love" they've ever known and they directly equate swipes (or the lack thereof) with their desirability and prospects.
OLD used to be a great way to meet people. However, helping people establish meaningful longterm connections and stop using the service isn't a sustainable business model.
> While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them
When it comes to dating apps, everyone I know falls into one of two categories:
The first group invests time into generating a good profile. They put the effort into getting get photos of themselves and presenting the photos properly. They write a good bio, avoiding the tired tropes ("love food and travel"), and they iterate on their bio based on responses. They go out on dates with an open mind and are willing to give people a chance.
The second group grabs random, unflattering pictures of themselves and throw them into the app without much consideration. They do things like use group photos where it's hard to even tell whose profile you're viewing. They grab a lot of silly or exaggerated pictures that make them look immature or present an image that doesn't match their personality. They write a short bio with useless tropes copied from other profiles. They make up their minds about people before even going on the first date.
The first group isn't finding their soulmate in the first month, but they do well. I've attended a double-digit number of weddings from people in this group. The second group is just relentlessly cynical and disappointed. I know a group of people, some of whom are classically attractive women, who have been doing online dating for years while complaining about the lack of good matches.
Online dating is a tool. Like any other tool, people get out of it what they put into it. You don't have to be in the top 10% of most attractive and successful people to match with others, but you do have to get over the cynicism and put in some effort.
Unfortunately this response is divorced from reality.
I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?
You're greatly underestimating the effect of good photos. As a bi guy, I've seen my share of both men's and women's dating profiles. The general trend: most profiles are terrible. Of the decent ones, women tend to have good photos, but shitty/non-existent bios, and the men tend to have good bios but bad photos. Only a small fraction of people combine both to make really compelling profiles.
So for men, the biggest improvement they can make is take more photos of yourself in hope for some good ones and maybe get some professional photos taken. What constitutes a good photo? In descending order of importance: 1) they want to be flattering. You'd think this would be obvious, but far too many profiles have photos that actively highlight negative features of their subject. If your hairline is failing, have photos with hats on. If you've got a beer belly, don't have side-facing photos. Etc. 2) They should suggest that you do fun things, and are thus likely to bring a potential date to such fun things. Nature shot, beach shot, interesting place shot. If you have some interesting hobby, maybe an action shot of you woodcutting/flying a model plane/intricately painting plastic figures. 3) Since this is a forum for tech workers, you probably have more discretionary income than average. *Subtly* demonstrate that.
Ultimately, what it boils down to is that everyone knows your profile pictures are going to be your absolute best photos of yourself, carefully crafted to make you look your best, overselling reality substantially. If you put bad pictures in your profile, people will STILL ASSUME THAT, and thus assume you look even worse.
I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual. And the guys they do think are attractive are often just their particular brand of 'cute' average guy who to my eyes as a non-attracted-to-men person don't look that much different than the previous 10 guys they swiped left on.
> I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual
The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention.
The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly individual" comment.
The even bigger takeaway from OKCupid's stats, IMO, was the fact that divisive profiles performed better than generally okay ones. People were more likely to actually engage with a match they found attractive, but other people didn't.
There are broad patterns of agreement but individual differences also. The faces most people will find attractive can be identified, but you can't select a face everyone will find attractive.
I would follow some accounts like She Rates Dogs and Ask Aubry to see some of what women are up against on dating apps. Every woman on those apps has an experience like you'll find on those feeds of their own, and as a man on those apps, it helps to understand the experience they're used to, and are expecting could happen again at any moment.
Men do the same thing. That’s literally why the swipe style of dating apps was created; to quickly judge if you are interested or not mainly in appearance. That’s why the OPs first point was about good photos and presentation.
This is correct, to an extent. But all the good presentation and clever bio-writing in the world will not save you if you are a typical 5/10 male on Tinder.
It’s more that not doing those things can be problematic for attractive people who would otherwise get matches.
The average woman does way more to take care of herself than the average man. I'm betting if most/a substantial portion of women didn't wash themselves, for example, that that would become another cutoff pretty quickly. Or if women didn't shave regularly/were showing stubble everywhere. Or if they routinely showed up with rat's nest hair.
(Most women who don't do basic things are depressed to the point they aren't on dating apps, so you wouldn't have an opportunity to swipe on them.)
One reason I'm glad I'm gay is that so many men just reek or don't perform basic hygiene.
That's false. Out of the seven characteristics of attractiveness, only one is under locus of control, the rest are genetically determined and exceedingly hard to change.
> The environment happens to you after your genes do.
So what? This correction changes nothing, the discussion is about control.
A man who wants to improve his attractiveness in terms of body height, skin colour or sensitivity of the scalp against 5α-DHT expressing follicle miniaturisation can't achieve shit by changing his environment.
Sure, but then say "it's too late to change it". Which I agree with! But being overly pop-scientific leads to, you know, eugenics.
If your hair is thinning that's less of a problem than you think. It looks bad if you look like you're intentionally ignoring it, but lean into it and you're fine.
I can't upvote this enough. HN is known to be very negative towards Tinder.
My first marriage ended with my wife divorcing me. We have 3 kids. On my Tinder profile I made it very clear I'm a dad. I'm not tall and not that handsome.
I'm a developer, so I don't meet that many single women in real life. Tinder was excellent. I met my current wife on Tinder, and still happily married years after our first Tinder date.
My wife is a relationship coach, and has great success with women. But the men are just uncoachable. They are not able to find a relationship, and still know better when an actual women tries to tell them what women want. Crazy.
Pretty grand generalization. Sometimes it feels like a coach advices you impossible, mutually contradictory or equivalent of jumping off a cliff. I guess it could be hard to find a matching coach.
I think it's very telling there's no real lesbian equivalent to the sex clubs for gay men, or Grindr for that matter. They do exist; relatively few women actually use them.
Pornography by and for gay men, is as popular if not more so, with gay men as pornography is with straight men. The market for such material aimed at women, gay or straight, is rather marginal by comparison.
Similarly, a very large % of gay men who are partnered romantically, are in open relationships. And by large % I mean around half. At least with American gay women, open relationships are a very minor thing, similar to the rates with heterosexuals.
The sexual behaviour of homosexual men and women is very different at a population/statistical level. Whether it's nature or nurture can of course be debated, but it seems like a very strong indicator that women's and men's sexuality are of a slightly different nature.
> Similarly, a very large % of gay men who are partnered romantically, are in open relationships. And by large % I mean around half. At least with American gay women, open relationships are a very minor thing, similar to the rates with heterosexuals.
I would love to know the actual number here, as someone in the gay male open relationship category.
I remember discussing this with a friend of mine, who is also in an open relationship. He came out with a fascinating statement that he had never seen a long term monogamous gay relationship where both parties were perfectly happy. After he said it, my first thought was that was ridiculous and then tried to think of friends who were the exception... I couldn't name a single one either. Every monogamous gay couple I've met going for longer than >1 year had at least one person in the relationship air that they were sexually frustrated to me in private and wanted more. Most were jealous of our relationship, but worried about the consequences of opening their relationship.
I am sure the monogamous gay couple who are happy is out there somewhere, but I've yet to meet them.
Sorry I did not include data I was thinking of when I posted:
> When analyzing the whole sample, approximately 2% of heterosexual participants, 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants, 22% of bisexual participants, and 14% of those who described their sexualities as “other” reported being in open relationships;
As another gay man, I used to be radically skeptical of monogamy. Like in my 20s I was spouting the line that it's a heterosexual construct falsely imposed on us for moralistic reasons. But both personal experience, and a widened social group, has led me to believe that, for a significant number of gay men a monogamous relationship is ideal. They're happiest in them, and seem to be able to make them work. Perhaps with some compromises and perhaps not entirely happy, but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.
> As another gay man, I used to be radically skeptical of monogamy. Like in my 20s I was spouting the line that it's a heterosexual construct falsely imposed on us for moralistic reasons. But both personal experience, and a widened social group, has led me to believe that, for a significant number of gay men a monogamous relationship is ideal. They're happiest in them, and seem to be able to make them work. Perhaps with some compromises and perhaps not entirely happy, but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.
Funnily enough I am precisely the opposite. I spent my 20s trying to hunt for "the one" and had a series of short, failed relationships. Now I'm in my 30s I am in a 9 year long successful (I think?) open/polyamorous relationship.
Really I think gay men (and men in general) struggle with communication skills and emotional maturity. Gaining those skills are key to maintaining long, healthy relationships. Non-monogamy is an avenue towards working towards achieving those skills because maintaining a healthy, open relationship means a lot of communication is required. In my opinion, it is a high risk, high reward strategy to a maintaining a relationship.
> but for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've met any couple that was perfectly happy.
I think we have to distinguish minor annoyances from major communication issues due to sex. Like it or not, sex is a big part of being human and sex drive is something can be wildly different between people. Non-monogamy can be an outlet for this.
A friend of mine did a small experiment. She’s quite good looking so she made a new account and another guy friend made another account at the same time. She has usually has 3000+ likes on bumble so we wanted to see how many she gets in 30 minutes. In 30 minutes the guy got 5 because of a new account and she got 150.
The ratio is so badly skewed that the apps end up working for no one. Neither men nor women.
You say that like she's getting the good end of the deal. But everything I've heard from women on those apps, they'd rather have the "handful of sincere responses" experience than the "bazillion goofs spamming them and sending dick pics at the first hello".
This isn't a refutation. You aren't saying women would trade places with men. You're saying women would trade the current experience of massive attention for a new experience of curated sincere attention. So damaging the male experience further.
I don't know if they would trade places with men, but it's definitely not a fun experience for them either. There seems to be a large group of men out there who are, not to put too fine a point on it, "single for a reason". Curating them out of the matches would damage their experience, but vastly improve the experience for everyone else. And maybe help clue them in that they need to make some changes if they want to find a compatible partner. Assuming a perfect curation system, which, I concede, is impossible.
It's been a while since I was on a dating site, but my experience was exactly that of a small amount of incoming attention, but almost all of it sincere. So yes, I think a lot of women would be happy to make that trade.
I just never saw a lot of the awful behavior that women get on the regular. E.g., the guys who will go from "u r hot" to "fuck you bitch" in a series of DMs over 12 hours with absolutely no response from women. It honestly amazes me that so many of them stay in the dating market at all.
If you're talking about the Halo Effect, both men and women are susceptible to it. Interestingly, this effect might be "negated by feelings of jealousy in women" [1].
Suggest her to try being a recruiter on LinkedIn as a thought experiment. Initial message should be "Hello, I have an exciting job offer for you, I've seen you know React".
You can have a stable/growing population with only 1 male per n>1 females. So, the evolutionarily optimal strategy is to crank up trait variance in males and have females select only the top 1/n males (hand-wavily speaking). Most modern human cultures suppressed this dynamic via socially enforced pair bonding. When you lose that social adaptation, you revert back to more atavistic matching dynamics.
Very interesting, from a systems perspective it makes a lot of sense that this would be the limit cycle behavior. The conclusion is a kind of corrolary to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateman's_principle, as regards the presence of energy bottlenecks (namely, gestation) in the process that propagates a species.
Came here to say something similar. Humans are much closer to “other” animals than what they think, and social instituions like marriage were created to prevent social mayhem.
> Humans are much closer to “other” animals than what they think
Plain false. Humans are very unique compared to other animals as I wrote in another response. See prof. Sapolsky's lectures on the topic. He's an outstanding anthropologist.
I think I agree with this. Society's laws and contracts mirror our instincts and feelings. We create laws because they encode a deep-seated feeling that most of us have about things. Not everyone agrees on every law; most of us don't want to murder, and would be sad if we did, but there are still serial killers.
We don't change our instincts just because there are laws. Look at how many people are in prison for drug possession. The law is much weaker than brain chemicals being expressed. (Also, not every law is based on wide agreement of human emotion. Sometimes lawmakers simply do whatever. I'm mostly talking about the ones that have been around since the dawn of humanity.)
Gender roles (and sexism) are primarily cultural. If you look through history there has been matriarchal and patriarchal societies. Monogamous and polygamous and so on in many combinations.
Humans sexuality is very unique compared to other animals and, respectfully, we should try not to play armchair Darwin.
There are very good lectures from prof. Sapolsky on youtube on the topic. Humans are complex and very weird.
Roles are very cultural, but who has the eggs isn't. One person can create 10-20 offspring over their life, another can create thousands (hypothetically).
The perceived imbalance in likes is not really the problem, it’s just the difference in social norms across genders. OLD is not terribly easy for men or women, let alone NB folks. Women have to sort through all those men, while men have to swipe on tons of women. There are also more men on the sites. The result is low quality matches all around because men are incentivized to swipe on everyone. Women will have an easier time just obtaining sex, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any good, and it’s not what most women are looking for, for numerous reasons.
Yeah, but you don't have deal with her problem which is an inbox flooded with random noise. It might be flattering for a minute but after that I'm sure it's a burden not much lighter than the empty inbox.
Besides, as long as you get those few responses, that will be enough for all but the most active and adventurous daters. There are only so many hours in the day.
Feels like there's a strong analog between tech careers and recruiters and men and women in the online dating scene.
In tech, fending recruiters off with a stick is far less of a burden and stress than being unemployed or permanently underemployed or underpaid in a different field. It's annoying, sure, but it's not going to cause you depression to have so many people showing interest in you, it validates some amount of self-worth. Recruiters also take an approach to recruitment very similarly to men in online dating, treating it as a numbers game and where they don't care about candidate quality before first contact. Blast out interest and feelers indiscriminately to anyone and then evaluate the quality of those who respond and be happy to settle for any commission in the end. Both are broken processes of course, but the power dynamics seem similar.
Her inbox might be flooded with messages, but most of those messages are spam. Most of the guys didn't even look at her profile, and instead swiped right on everyone and copy-pasted the same message to all of their matches. If she replies, most of them will not respond. Few will put in the effort to have a substantial conversation, and fewer will actually try to go out on a date with her.
If she goes on a date, she would end up in the same situation. She will probably carry the conversation and will be more interested in them than they are in her. Many will agree to have sex with her for the sake of their own pleasure, but few would attempt to give her pleasure. If she gets into a relationship, chances are the guy won't pull his weight (because he's not really interested) and she will end up doing all the work. He will regularly flake on her to hang out with his friends and play videogames, and will try to hide the fact that he doesn't actually like her as a person or enjoy being around her.
On the other hand, if you get a handful of responses, that means a handful of women are interested in you. They actually want to talk to YOU, to the extent that you are accurately represented by your profile. The chance that one of those people are a good match for you, and that they are willing to give you a fair chance is high. And if they end up not actually liking who you are, they will do you the favor of ending it instead of wasting your time.
As for guys who don't get matches or messages at all: it's because your profile sucks. Take better pictures. No, those pictures suck too, try again.
Funny for you to imply that women carry the conversations on dates.
My experience on dating apps, and in real life dating (including with my current partner) is that it's the man's burden to entertain the date. The overwhelming majority of date time was spent with me asking questions to try to coax the girl into actually talking, and talking about themselves (which people like to do).
Hell, most of the time that girls ghost guys on dating apps is because they're "boring". Dick pics are not sent out by more than half of all men who are rejected, but at least half of those rejctees we're "boring".
One way to try to fight this is to jestermax or goofmax. I refuse. I shouldn't have to become a damn comedian to prove that I've got "game".
The flawed assumption here is that every match a guy gets is a wonderful, invested woman, while the vast majority of the matches women get are evil depraved men.
In practice, the proportion of good matches are similar for men and women. The issue is that men get many fewer of them in total, which means many fewer good, invested matches.
> As for guys who don't get matches or messages at all: it's because your profile sucks. Take better pictures.
No amount of picture taking changes the fact that being short or ugly or bald or old or non-white firmly entrenches the profile in the "never match" category.
> * Theres a power imbalance due to cultural expectations that men are the pursuers
I've been told by a male friend who (quite successfully) uses several of these apps that even on that one that makes women initiate contact (is it Bumble?) the first message is just "hi" like 99% of the time. Meanwhile, that's a guaranteed way for a dude to get ghosted, on any platform where guys can initiate contact, as is responding with a reciprocal "hi" on that one. In either case the clear expectation is that the guy needs to present something interesting right out of the gate, very first message, and generally drive the discussion. (this guy attributes his success largely to his A+ chat game, so I'm inclined to believe his take on this)
I have a healthy dating life outside of apps, but yeah - I think women understanding how difficult and dramatically different online dating is for men in comparison to women will never truly be accepted or taken seriously by women.
I think the most damaging reality of these apps is when a man who himself thinks he's low-value and doesn't understand how to improve only gets a few matches from the algo of women who are below average attractiveness.
I'm going to get flamed for this but in general I think it's right to assume that the average woman in 2022 is less attractive than the average man, BMI / height stats support this.
This outcome generally signals to at-risk men (in terms of mental state) that women they would find attractive have all swiped left on them only leaving below average or physically unfit women. It's also entirely likely that they might just not be desire-able on dating apps and in fact, are only matched with people who don't have standards. That said, I think standards are important on both sides AND I've had men far more attractive than me also encounter a situation of only having a handful of matches even in NYC.
> I'm going to get flamed for this but in general I think it's right to assume that the average woman in 2022 is less attractive than the average man, BMI / height stats support this.
Definitely 6' and up - and I'm shorter than that. It's pretty obvious, but I don't lose sleep about it. I also meant BMI relative to height, not height in general. Statistics don't lie in terms of what each population generally finds attractive.
Women want men to message first. So they don't message first. So a lot of men spray all the women with generic messages first (because spending even any amount of effort on a single woman is most likely going to get ignored, so men just assume 1 in 100 people respond and don't put much effort until there is at least one response from her). Women then get inboxes flooded. Women then increasingly don't message first because they get complacent with the hundreds of messages in their inbox.
The dating culture needs to change, women need to stop expecting men to lead, take some control, and pick and message people they'd like to get to know. If men start getting some nonzero amount of inbound from people who like them, they are less likely to need to "spray" the entire female population with generic messages.
Except for a lot of people Bumble often just doesn't show your profile to anyone you swiped right on. Might be if you don't meet conventional attractiveness thresholds. It's a waste of time if you're not some DiCaprio. I get enough matches on other apps with the same profile that it's pretty clear there's something fishy going on in their algorithm.
I've been told by a few women in person that I'm really good to talk to. I disagree and think I'm average at conversation. Apparently most guys actually suck at it, at least with women.
I responded to one profile by noting the lake in the background of one of her pics and asking where it was. She about fell off her chair and said I might be the only guy on there who actually reads profiles.
Up your f'ing game guys, it doesn't take much apparently.
I got out of my shell by having dinner at the bar and talking to strangers of both genders. Now I'm a known regular and sometime people buy me a shot. This took years, so get started today.
Not a club or pickup type place, just the local pubs where people eat, drink, and watch sports while seated at the bar. You can sit there and have dinner and not say anything, or choose to engage with the person next to you if they seem receptive. How to tell? Ask a question, see if they answer and make some attempt to continue - like asking something back, or telling more than a terse response.
Dating apps are terrible. Women respond well to genuine friendship and gradually deepening intimacy. No one, man or woman, wants to be thrown into a super short-term popularity contest where physical appearance and some shallow "chatting" is the only differentiator. That's not how you build community and intimacy.
I hear this all the time. Perhaps demand follows an 80/20% rule because my experience doesn't align with this.
I'm a man, 40 years, polyamorous, yet I have zero problems finding people to date. On average, I have more partners than the women I often date. I agree that Tinder and such are highly skewed, but it doesn't make it useful for any gender. In-person (events, social groups, etc), I find there are a large number of people who actively want to date me and spend time with me.
I don't see a clear gender divide in dating opportunities in my personal experience. I haven't been able to figure out what is unique about my experience vs the majority of men. I am not a "10" in any way; I just have a lot of hobbies.
One potential danger here is single friends seeing you/your partner on the app. In the ideal world they'd bring this to your attention and you'd be able to explain it away easily. In the real world it's absolutely how vicious rumors start.
Could easily result in her losing interest in him when she sees how coldly other women treats him. Emotions are fickle and an experience like that might change the way she sees him.
How you write profiles probably matters. If you're sparse or you're too wordy, that's going to put people off.
You also have to have some hooks --things that are part of your personality that can instigate some interest. Could be climbing, playing an instrument, working on a farm, etc. But also don't make things up. Looks matter, but after that initial attraction, other things matter, are they organized, are they too compulsive... You know their habits and so on. You want someone normal but also not someone boring, for the most part.
Having done the dating thing for a while and being male, I've had no problem with making contacts and going on dates. Quality not quantity. Can easily end up on two dates a week. I'm nothing special.
i know women get inundated with messages on dating apps, but I would not blame the structure of dating app for the misfortune of some men.
The #1 cause of men not being datable is the advice they get from other men. Try listening to women instead.
In workplace settings, men tend to speak up whether or not they have something wise to contribute. This communications style carries over into the way men use dating apps.
Also, you can't sell the libertarian techbro thing as attractive. It isn't. Your prerogative to be that way. It doesn't bother me in a workplace setting. But it is a massive turn off. You are lowering your odds. You can find counterexamples, such as that when I was an undergrad, women ran the Objectivist newspaper. But outliers be outlying.
Libertarian techbros aren't that common. Most tech people are liberals just like any other college educated group.
(Similarly, richer people/political donors are usually liberals and the richer/more they donate the more liberal they are. It's all thanks to education polarization.)
Tinder is straight up depressing for the median dude. My mind was blown just how much harder it was to get a date on tinder vs getting a date in real life. I can do the latter pretty easily but trying to get one on tinder would be like months of constant effort to then get ditched before the date even starts.
It feels like 90% of women on there are chasing the top 10% of dudes and not settling for anything else.
While the 80/20 stuff is true i think another under-explored aspect is that there just isn't many non-bot women on these dating apps, after all their business is exploiting men for these gold memberships/boosts. Most women i know in their 20s easily get attention on a daily basis through posting on Instagram, working a retail orwaitress job or simply walking into a bar, they also have social groups and hobbies so they aren't really using Tinder.
the wildest part is that the very people who advocate not hitting on people at work will be the first people talk have a nice relationship with a customer who hit on them at work
everyone can perceive that this acts as just gatekeeping for unattractive people
yes, newsflash people would rather not have advances from ugly people, but to masquerade that as trying to vilify advances at all is pure fiction
Those 10% dudes are smart enough not to settle for a 90% woman for more than a few dates when they can pull a new one off the app at a moments notice. In the end they are the only winners in this situation.
I think our generation will be remembered for over-optimization more than anything. We keep chasing the best hotel, the best restaurant, the best partner, not realizing that things that give us meaning and happiness are intangible, unique, weird, and usually right in front of us.
I often wonder exactly how much happier I am having a billion excellent choices for entertainment, versus the small set we might have in the '90s.
I doubt it's that much. Is the very-best movie from last year, uncovered by ten or fifteen minutes of targeted searching and reading, likely to be better than whatever I'd have picked up at the video store based on gut feeling and what a few friends had told me? Oh, god yes, of course it is. Am I happier this way, though? I'm less certain about that. Probably a little? But I don't think it's a large effect.
Ditto having "the world's knowledge at your fingertips" (well, ignore that it's far from all of it and that you're probably still better off hitting the books for a lot of things, but it's good at the trivial stuff anyway). Can I answer most silly little "I wonder..." questions in five to ten seconds? Yep. Am I happier this way? I'm not so sure, since before the Internet was available nearly everywhere nearly all the time I rarely even became consciously aware of such trivial thoughts and they were very easy to dismiss when I did.
I don't know, haven't most people learned by now that all these fine-grained ratings essentially mean either "crap" or "not crap, it depends on your preferences"? In a few cases, "crap but you might like it".
Yes, but I don't see why everyone is acting like Tinder is the only choice. There are other apps that seem to work differently and better.
I used Tinder for close to a year and had an experience close to what you're describing. I only managed to go on two dates that both went nowhere. At the suggestion of someone on one of the dating subreddits, I switched to Hinge, saw the difference in the amount of attention I was getting, and never looked back. Eventually, I met my girlfriend on there.
That's Tinder. I'm told Bumble and Hinge actually work for people.
Of course, what really helps is to be on the favorable end of the gender mismatch if you're somewhere like SF or NYC. It's not nearly as bad as online people say it is though. You only need to find one person!
My wife doesn't get it ... I often tell her that if both her and I signed up for a dating app, her inbox would be flooded with messages. Yet, if I were to message hundreds of women, I might get lucky and get a handful of responses. She thinks I'm exaggerating ...