I do agree that bandwidth is significantly higher in person, we’ve evolved efficient pattern detection, and wish it were more acceptable to meet up for a quick coffee immediately after matching. But a few bad apples spoil the bunch.
There’s an alternate explanation - that the fittest companies prioritize engagement and revenue until reaching some threshold of user dissatisfaction. The healthiest businesses often have customers who wish they could leave, but can’t.
The reason I mention this is that “submarine article” is typically used to cast suspicion at the aims of the article. I can’t see any reason to do that to this article.
> (…) pictures also give lots of information about important non-superficial things, like your personality, values, social class, and lifestyle.
This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps: where do all these pictures come from? People seem to have pictures of them doing all kinds of activities. When I’m out with friends doing whatever, no one is taking pictures. Even if they did, it’s not like we exchange pictures afterwards.
I genuinely don’t have any pictures of myself.
Are me and my friends weird for not documenting every second of our lives?
I assume most people are this way, you just have others start taking pictures of the things you normally do (but didnt normally take pictures of) when you feel the need to make/flesh out a profile.
Practical suggestion: you can ask. Someone takes a picture with you in it, say "hey, you mind sending me that?" Like lots of social things it's not automatic (which, you know, Facebook was for a few years, and that was nice), and you have to "put yourself out there" a bit. Most people won't say 'no', and the thread with the photo is an opportunity for further interaction, if you want it to be.
People actually curate the profile and copywrite the text. It’s not real authentic life documented by accident. Once you put your profile there for others to judge you soon figure out that it needs to be manufactured. That’s when you start asking for others to snap a photo while your out doing the thing you maybe wouldn’t even do if it was not for the show.
You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a more stable job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity.
I think there are certain basic psychological facts that are anti-standard-economics that nerds (and therefore tech companies) almost always tend to be completely blind to. This is one of them.
This applies to almost anything, even “which restaurant should we go to tonight?”
In this context (non-work related decisions) I find the “analysis paralysis” stems from a person not knowing themselves well enough or knowing themselves but not sure how to assert it without coming off in an off-putting way.
For the latter, “which restaurant should we go to tonight?” I take that as whatever I pick is it so I pick what I want (as long as I know the other people dont have allergies to the place or something) and that's it. When people ask for a place to pick they usually mean it (from my experience), and they are happy to tag along whereever -- otherwise they will suggest something and ask others opinion, I take that to mean they want to go there but don't want to seem bossy or some other weirdness, and so we go there unless I have a problem with it that I'll voice and suggests something similar.
For the former, I think people are too worried about coming off as "selfish" (and avoid learning themselves). It makes sense because some people really are, and being around them makes decent people really not want to be that. But knowing what you like and want especially when it's not what you have been told to like and want is the biggest hurdle to getting past the “analysis paralysis” here. If you know you and what you like and want than there is really not much to analysis, the analysis should be happening everyday of your life so when these big things come up you have a solid foundation to go on. Otherwise, a lot of it is trying to figure out what the best option is according to outside guidelines you've been given -- which is great for work, but not so much for oneself.
Of course, maybe there are people who can't do the above for whatever, but it's a skill to know what you like and want and a skill to put it into practice without being rude, just like talking to random people or programming. You get better with real world practice/exposure.
That’s where the analysis paralysis would come in to play in dating.
[edit] I missed the indefinitely, read as definitely - so if you mean only one of them forever. The one I liked best, which really isnt far off from how I do thing now. I use to drive past multiple starbucks to go to the one I enjoyed most. It's not like they had better coffee than the others, I simply knew I liked going to that one the most.
I get this may sound trite, but by knowing myself. I've made it priority to know my mind (and feelings/emotions as best I can) and work on figuring out what is mine and what was given to me or told is suppose to be mine. From food to politics to values, I still find things ingrained that are not me. It's like keeping a workout/exercise routine and not get lazy with it.
How to choose? I will have already put them in order and know what foods I like where, then when asked the question I will know what I want to eat and the places to satisfy that -- from there its about other things too, do we have time to drive the the farthest one that I want? no? okay this other one is closer and it has this other thing I want so we go there. One has a long wait and we are both actually hungry? I hear there is one like it and my date is also adventurous so it'll be fun to try a new place together.
Honestly it's about knowing yourself, what your priorities are and what can be worked around. It's so much easier when you have a solid grasp on "knowing yourself". I know if this swank restaurant is going to take 30min drive and another 1.5 hour wait and I'm hungry, it doesn't matter how impressive the place is because I will be at my least impressive. If the date really wants to go there, I will have a snack before-hand so I wont be a stubborn-hangry-asshat (because I know I will be and instead of fighting it, own and manage it so everyone has a good time)
You’re right that the comment you replied to was describing a different effect (adverse selection?)
If I have nobody, and you introduce me to someone, then it's simple. They're absolutely worth pursuing.
If I have one or two "maybes", and you introduce me to someone, it's easy for them to be clearly better than anyone I've got, and therefore clearly "the one", at least the one to pursue right now.
But if you give me one hundred, then there probably isn't one of them that is clearly better than all the others. Hence, analysis paralysis.
Not quite. No matter how badly you want a relationship, I guarantee there exist potential partners with whom a relationship would make your life worse, not better. And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous potential partners is most people.
Care to expand on why?
As far as I remember, it jokingly assumes that one's active dating period might be ages 20-40 and then applying the optimal solution from the secretary problem means that you should calibrate your expectations until age 27 (assuming regular dating of course) and then immediately marry the next best person that exceeds this threshold.
I do think that we humans have such complex brains and hyper-specialization and the amount of intellect in the world when you look at it is ridiculous. So the ideas of arrange marriage working in favour of evolution, and not in favour of the person, while somebody does that is, very interesting...
I think cultures play a major impact in how one approaches dating.
Then, it won’t matter that there are richer, more attractive, more intelligent options out there: you love what you love and that’s what you should pursue, and when you get it, that’s when you will know peace. It will feel like you won at life.
If people cannot overcome the paradox, it is because love in this world has become short in supply.
I believe it's the opposite, they're exactly aware of this and have taken advantage of it to maximize engagement and profit, of course with the accompanying insanity, emotional burnout and further division/culture wars fuelling.
There's this joke about a man in his 40s. He goes to the gym and asks the instructor which machine he should use to look more attractive to young ladies. The instructor looks at him and says "you'd do well by using the ATM outside".
I think it's pretty telling that the alternatives people talk about are always alternative strategies for how to meet lots of people. The most common pre-app experience, where you didn't meet lots of people and married a random person in your social circles rather than a best friend who gets you and shares your key interests, isn't something most people are interested in.
The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal
For what it's worth, I think this has always been true of the web in general (forums, chat, social media, comments sections, etc.)
> The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal
I guess a lot of people you would call "cool" I would rather call "annoying self-centered people who are often very concerned about their public image (i.e. narcists)".
Yes, this people may have a much easier time finding dates in real life, but if you are rather into different kinds of people for a relationship and are more on the introverted side, I guess dating in real life is not the best idea for success.
I personally just try to talk to people (girls) my age who have similar interests and maybe express if I feel any emotions to them and accept or embrace both rejections/acceptations.
That being said, there is this idea of desperation of constantly needing someone to love you or is it too much to ask for being loved etc. I had created a place even whose intentions was to help people struggling in finding relationships but that made me realize that people just used it to ship each other or have controversies or use it as a way to meet/date and I was none the wiser/ didn't think much of it as I was decently happy thinking that some people connected because of my efforts yet i personally felt really weird with my niche hobbies and my place felt so mainstream that I couldn't be myself in my own place or didn't feel like it so I quickly abandoned it and now its just abandonware really
I personally feel like dating irl is the best thing after all my experiences or talking to people in general online, Even in dating irl, I would consider for many reasons that dating apps are still net negative. As I said, personally the best thing I feel like doing right now is maybe working on myself to be more confident and if i find a girl attractive and want to know more, then to directly approach her. Atleast, that's my goal in dating to be confident enough and to work on. myself on being a better partner.
You're essentially describing almost the entire online dating userbase here though.
How are people who are marketing themselves as the best chance for sexual gratification through display of their usually either materialistic or pretentiously modest lifestyle, providing useless tmi list requirements from the other party not self-centered?
They have literalized the concept of dating market, they have no existential inhibition of identifying as a product to be desired to be consumed as much as possible and treating others the exact same way.
Of course we have to thank a handful of evopsych "researchers" for that who are gaining traction from mass consumption podcasts by promoting their absurd, academically dubious fringe "findings" about supposedly deterministic human behaviors whose effectiveness is irrefutable for sexual reproduction success (remember, according to them homo sapiens have no deeper intellect and are moving meat that solely care about maximizing their offspring # and will do whatever it takes to succeed, so if you don't fit this description you're disordered and destined to extinction). Ideas that end up being diluted and appropriated by groups to demoralize those psychologically vulnerable.
At the same time, there's a bunch of people who aren't so popular who are now done checking a short queue of candidates, and willing to go with whoever shows up next above their bar.
But those people are still busy rejecting everyone in a seemingly infinite line of suitors. So we have a problem getting people to match.
Add to this that the sexes are not distributed the same way. There's a few ultra hot guys who will never not have a date, and there's a more even number of hot women who the less hot guys are waiting on.
If you're speed dating or doing any other real-world dating, your queues are a lot shorter. You will feel like your idea of the market is set much sooner, and you can start picking out a candidate.
The secretary problem is a solution to the problem of having to make repeated choices. In essence it's a solution to the problem of having to choose a secretary every morning for the day. You can even say it's a solution to the problem of a computer process spending a few seconds consuming an infinite stream at the top of every hour for the next hour. It's not a solution to the problem of making a (hopefully) unique choice.
I've been in a monogamous relationship for nearly 16 years I would thus not be in a position to be a first customer.
And it is worth being a little suspicious of the people who 'hate' dating apps. There are valid criticisms, but the people who are just bad partners are going to turn up somewhere and it might be that pool of people - they tend not to be big on reflecting on their own flaws with rigorous intellectual honesty and would blame the apps.
Founders selling out should also be viewed more critically than it currently is.
Even before then, I don’t think dating apps were the only issue—it was more the general lack of human interaction, with everything shifting online. Being in a relationship is nothing like just "chatting" or being "connected." I’m not complaining, but during my teenage and young adult years, I feel like I had less-than-ideal real-life experiences, which shaped my social skills and expectations. Talking to people in their 30s now, I get the sense they’re only experience this much later in life.
The only new factor that COVID brought in concerning dating is that it separated society into two groups which in German are disrespectfully called "Coronazis" (those who defended the restrictions of civil rights because of COVID-19) and "Covidioten" (those who did not believe in the COVID-19 fearmongering and the government measures). Both of these groups realized that they are not compatible with the other group on a human level and are thus no suitable dating matches.
This actually lead to the inception of a new dating site for those who are skeptical of official COVID-19 narrative or feel attracted to people who share personality traits of such people: https://www.conscious-love.com
No it also brought kids who missed one year of socialization, positive social experiences, mingling.
Just one year? It changed habits forever in favour of remote classes, in which schoolm don’t play their role in giving a cohesive experience for students.
I was talking to this about this to my mum just a few days ago and she said that no it didn't impact, but I was so shocked because honestly I feel like its just not even the kids but everyone which got impacted but I genuinely feel like that there was this sense of loneliness in covid
I am not sure but before covid everyone was friends with everybody else kind of things, I was in 6th grade and I would honestly consider it one of the best periods of my life, I remember how one of my friends had prepared covid as a general knowledge fact for an exam and he spoke it in class and we didn't think much of it untill it started spreading and then our 7th class became purely online due to lockdowns etc.
I do feel like that there is a lost year or more and that has impacted people in a lot of ways.
Personally, the one thing I noticed was the fact that a lot of the times, we felt like being watched by others and what not to a bigger degree.
Like, I remember just talking to girls as friends when I was in 6th grade, It wasn't that much of a big deal but later in covid and even after covid, when the school re-opened. I found that girls used to sit seperately and we boys used to sit seperately in completely seperate rows, not even on the same rows or the same benches.
Before covid this wasn't the case and we were sort of forced by our teachers to sit whether with boys or girls randomly and there were some good interactions that I deeply miss.
I am not sure if this is just something that naturally tansitions from 6th to 7th grade thing or something, We boys and girls used to talk but there was clearly this disconnect of 1 year between us, boys used to talk so frequently in boys group and girls in the girls but whenever a girl talked to us, it was most likely in public chats and I mean, you could never just small talk to somebody, I think I loved small talks so I used to create personal groups with my homies just chatting but the mere act of adding a girl to talk personally online felt really making a big deal I guess.
I personally noticed so many smaller things which I have felt as if have somewhat radicalized both girls and boys even in small mannerisms.
There became a us vs them mentality at a younger age which really got radical in 9th grade for sure.
For example, it used to be that something like 30-40% of relationships started in the workplace.
Yes. The reality is well known. PlentyOfFish used to publish statistics. About 10% of dating app users are "date bacon" and find matches they like. Everyone else is a dissatisfied loser. The losers provide the repeat business and the profits, just like the gambling industry.
What women want is > 6' tall, over $100K a year, reasonably good looking, and reasonably young compared to the woman. This is about 1% of the US male population.
But a much higher fraction of dating service profiles. Two good-looking women I know have shown me their side of a dating app. Each had over 1000 matches, but the ones they met did not live up to their resume. (Fun fact: the organization of ex Navy SEALS says that there are at least 10x as many people claiming to be ex-SEALS as actually exist. There aren't that many of those guys. Only a few thousand. But on dating apps...)
Or too wrapped up in their own machismo to particularly care.
Ironically I met my wife while I was on a date with another woman. We had a much better organic connection, and she was way hotter than almost all the girls on the apps.
This leads into behavior, as you can spend however much time you want vibing and talking through text, but meeting and spending time together in person will invariably be different. This results in two major high-pressure, high-filter events as opposed to the one from initially meeting in person.
I would rather create a very honest profile because if some potential candidate is rather into the "artificial persona" that I project in my profile, when the relationship gets more serious, the match will soon realize that in real life I'm not a particular good fit.
It felt a bit unnecessary. In any case, maybe it was just how totally random in age and interest the people there were, but the result wasn't like cramming 15 online dates into the span of a single one. It was more like 15 conversations with people I would never have had the slightest impulse to contact via an online dating app. Most of the conversations had what felt like a comfortable mutual vibe of "we both understand we could not plausibly be attracted to each other." Then again, in online dating, I've come to realize that most guys incessantly swipe right, while I almost always swipe left.
However, like the iOS keyboard, people will put up with some annoyances if the overall product is valuable, and swiping for a mate (or, back in simpler times, answering heaps of questions on OkCupid and doing lots of clicking) is easier than doing so through church/school/work/bar/other opportunities through consistent exposure. (To wit: I met many incompatible people through the usual methods and met my wife through OkCupid, so the dating apps aren't useless!)
Also, as a former speed-dating host, speed-dating has always been something people mostly did for the entertainment value. I never did the math on it, but if I had to guess, it probably had about the same odds of finding someone than the apps back then.
If someone shows up to a speed dating event, that indicates minimum level of investment in the interaction.
This is a double-edged sword because if the apps hadn't been addictive I just wouldn't have used them that much and I would have ended up with less dates. On the other hand, it obviously plays a part in the toxic underpinnings that make the whole experience so miserable in the long run
Hard to see how you can really address this with design. E.g. OkCupid didn't use to have this dopamine-driven property at least back in the day when I first used it. I found it fucking boring, I didn't invest enough time into it, and ultimately I never met anyone in person (sure, I think part of the reason was also the people I saw there also seemed boring, but that can't be completely orthogonal).
Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses.
For example a lot of communities in Canada just don’t work like this. Highly incompatible with this kind of social network, mostly due to the pre existing real social fabric.
And: shout out to Max and Chris because they really got it with OKC in the beginning, which this article doesn’t seem to say anything about other than just to name drop.
gassi•2d ago
Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and/or feelings of inadequacy.
cbondurant•14h ago
A dating app that is effective at solving the problem it is ostensibly designed to solve will never make money as people will be matched quickly and will have no need to pay for the service. So clearly no profitable dating app is good at matching people.
I'm of the opinion that using a tool that is constantly setting you up for romantic failure and rejection in the name of keeping you on its platform is a really good way to wreck your mental health.
zelphirkalt•14h ago
nradov•13h ago
10000truths•14h ago
djoldman•14h ago
Userbase expansion is new users less leaving users for a time period. So there are two factors, not just "new users."
In any case, Match Group apps are well into the phase of focusing on extracting the most money possible from their paying users as opposed to gaining new users.
After all, infinite users are useless to a company, even if it costs nothing to support them, if none of them pay.
parpfish•14h ago
If you want to drive top-of-the-funnel growth, make the product good even it causes some folks to drop out once they’re in a relationship.
CuriouslyC•15m ago
Most young men can't approach women, most young women can't handle being approached and we don't have shared spaces where people can get to know each other and pair off anymore. Young people think the apps are dumpster fires, they hate them, but the alternative is sadly worse.
Etheryte•13h ago
onlyrealcuzzo•13h ago
1) The platforms aren't growing that impressively. Most of their users have been on the platform for a while, were previous users, etc.
2) It doesn't matter how good the app is, you need a network effect. New users are going to go to where the potential dates are.
3) Marketing does wonders. An app can suck and have great marketing. It will get users over an app that actually works and doesn't have good marketing.
4) Lots of people on dating apps are looking for dates (hookups), not partners. If the apps can keep you getting dates, not partners, they can keep you on the app and happy.
TheOtherHobbes•13h ago
The relative newcomers - Bumble and Hinge - grew by trying to offer a better experience, especially for women, who are traditionally overwhelmed with unreciprocated interest on conventional apps. Both seem to have admitted defeat now and moved to the usual model.
In terms of revenue, the incentive to keep millions of users spending is far higher than the nominal gains from persuading friends of a successful couple to join up. Given that most users aren't successful, that network effect is tiny.
There's an opposing network effect of *keeping customers unmatched, because this provides gossip and entertainment among friends, which gives them a reason to continue using a service.
We know that string-alongs are a real thing on dating sites - especially, but not exclusively, for men.
There's also a small but not negligible subculture of (mostly) women who use dates for free meals and get a good return on their monthly subscription.
And a lot of sites - not just Tinder - overlap hook-up culture with people seeking marriage and kids. If anything the former is a more popular option now.
brudgers•14h ago
Tinder is not Match is not Grind. People partner for various reasons and durations.
e2e4•14h ago
https://www.facebook.com/dating
jeffbee•12h ago
phkahler•5h ago
feoren•14h ago
DaSHacka•14h ago
Bravo, I haven't laughed this much in a while. God-tier satire.
linguae•13h ago
tbossanova•13h ago
sqrt_1•13h ago
TimTheTinker•13h ago