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

technologyreview.com

31–40 of 81 posts

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

#31
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…

[deleted]

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

#32
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…

[deleted]

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

#33
post #26

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

Do they realize they are being throttled? Just because one end sends a swipe doesn't mean the other end receives it right away or at all. Men who send a lot of swipes get their outgoing swipes throttled. Women who receive a lot of swipes get those swipes throttled, too. Think about if you were the programmer working on Tinder. The first thing I would build is swipe spam detection.

What do you mean by throttled?

As I've seen there is a daily limit on swipes (which can be bypassed with an in app purchase).

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

#34
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."

It's well-known that there's very few single women in the Bay Area, whereas DC is the opposite, with a surplus of single women.

NYC also has a large surplus of single women, and Seattle has a surplus of single men.

Basically, the east coast cities have female surpluses, and the tech-heavy west coast cities have male surpluses.

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

#35

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.

Yes, complete with comments and criticism.

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

#36
post #22

21% of women sending a message first seems surprising. I only skimmed the paper, but it doesn't seem like they removed bots from their data. Back when I was single, the vast majority of women messaging first were bots.

Yeah, this is definitely the case. I swipe right on everyone. It's an extreme rarity to find a woman who texts first. I'd put it at easily less than 5% (if they aren't a bot).

The bots are getting smarter; now they wait for you to write first, then chat you up a bit, then give you a spiel about how their boyfriend has ED and they need a hook-up.

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

#37
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've always wondered what this sort of behavior does to the number of single males/females. Eg, ultimately what really happens?

I could list a dozen questions about each genders respective choosey levels and tactics.. they're quite common and well known. But at the end of the day, are they even effective? Does each gender even have the same goals? Are males and females even happy with the result of their (conscious or unconscious) behavior?

The two parties in question have such different tactics and tend to play the game so differently. Yet they're dependent on each other (barring additional genders or gender preferences, which only complicate matters in this already confusing discussion haha).

It's all quite puzzling. Personally, i view myself as very different in this data sample, so perhaps i'm so puzzled because i'm so different.. for better or worse. Regardless, i don't understand.

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

#39
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Personally, I'd rather be picky and get nothing if the alternative is having to sleep with someone I'm totally not attracted to. Porn is more satisfying, and with porn I don't have to worry about hurting the girl's feelings. That said, however, you do have to be realistic about what kind of woman you can attract. Also, if you get distracted by someone you're really not into, that can keep you from meeting someone who…

I've always felt people on both sides of the fence are too picky. I met my soon-to-be wife on a dating site, so i'm sure i'm biased, but i've always felt they are the way to go.

Not specifically Tinder, but rather a good algorithm that improves your signal to noise ratio. The problem there, as i see it, is always users though. Even if the site has an awesome pitch, you need critical mass to feel you have a shot at it.

Perhaps Facebook should buy and integrate something like OkCupid. A data-centric approach to matching, combined with the largest data set (albeit, not tailored for OkCupid..) seems like a very interesting prospect.

edit: Not sure what being picky has to do with dating sites... think i wandered, apologies.

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

#40
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…

While not expert in Tinder specifically this seems to come up in most digital matchmaking scenarios in my experience in variety of areas. If you keep your ear to the ground long enough you can identify broad archetypes, the same way as if you watch how people write search queries. You can quickly identify who is new, who has been around for years, who just came back and is out of date, who only knows one trick that worked for them in the past, the desperate, the overdetailed, the ascetics, the repeaters, the copycats and so on.

It was a little more interesting when things were more anonymous, but nowadays since identity and digital identity are strongly coupled I assume less dupes, alternate accounts, and full-identity copycats. In my opinion it's just a characteristic of the medium of digital matchmaking. The goal outcome is a match, that's all you want. There is a temporal lingua franca of the moment with trends, and you are either following it or you are not. Because the other users are only able to see this particular payload of images/bio/whatever, all inferences towards this goal must be evaluated from only this input and so it does tend to be exhausting.

I think to answer your question more succinctly, I haven't seen a digital matchmaking service that doesn't act like this.

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