Live data from Hacker News

How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

technologyreview.com

1–10 of 81 posts

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#3
Finally, a topic I can consider myself some kind of expert in!

For the record, here are my credentials: I've tinder-valeted multiple guy friends, selecting women and conversing with them and warming things up for them. My friends happen to be across a wide variety of attractiveness and success spectrum.

Observations:

1. As is obvious, attractive/successful men get a lot more likes than women.

2. Guys who get lesser matches get increasingly desperate, and start liking everyone.

3. Being 'picky' for guys is hard work. It seems funny when I put it this way, but going through hundreds/thousand(s) of women, and even making a binary choice of yes/no is actually pretty tiring. Even my better guy friends have tended to go on the safer side and pick the earlier choices, because oh god it's a tiring head-aching process, even if you have a group of friends assisting you with the choice and the conversations.

Going through Tinder so much has made me very very very cynical either about people, or the kind of people on Tinder. We're all stereotypes. Really. One picture with mountain in the background, one with a beach, one in Europe, one with friends, one with pet/lonely pouty picture. Bios mentioning 1) 'sarcasm' 2) love of beer 3) love of scotch/whisky. Some mention their heights, most add ' I don't know why this matters but here it is'. Almost everyone desirable puts 'not into hookups', but rarely means it. So many other things. It was only after I started heavily using Tinder (for others) that I really appreciated meeting/dating people more in person/talking over the phone and got really into 'old school' dating.

Anyone else have very different experience?

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#6
post #3

Finally, a topic I can consider myself some kind of expert in! For the record, here are my credentials: I've tinder-valeted multiple guy friends, selecting women and conversing with them and warming things up for them. My friends happen to be across a wide variety of attractiveness and success spectrum. Observations: 1. As is obvious, attractive/successful men get a lot more likes than women. 2. Guys who get lesser m…

What I found interesting is that I (a straight, male) get a far higher match percentage in the D.C. area than in the S.F. Bay Area. This happens every time I travel back to D.C. I imagine that there are a lot of interesting variables that go into this, making this research not applicable for the "real world."

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#7

A couple of my guy friends have told me they swipe "Yes" on every single girl. I suspect that this isn't too uncommon.

Sounds like they need a 'selectivity rating' so you can tell they aren't serious. Like your seller rating on EBay.

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#8

A couple of my guy friends have told me they swipe "Yes" on every single girl. I suspect that this isn't too uncommon.

I've heard this as well. It's the shotgun effect, it's not that different from how many/most guys find dates. Ask 100 girls to get 10 dates to maybe get 1 date that isn't a total disaster. For something like Tinder that a lot of people just use for hookups, it's going to be even more pronounced because guys will be even less picky.

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#9

A couple of my guy friends have told me they swipe "Yes" on every single girl. I suspect that this isn't too uncommon.

Sounds like they need a 'selectivity rating' so you can tell they aren't serious. Like your seller rating on EBay.

Oh, they are serious. That's just what a lot of people have to do to get anywhere with anyone. The alternative for most guys is being picky and getting nothing.
Post reply on HN