Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed • Hacker News Board

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#161

Post by mumblemumble » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

klipt wrote: post #86

Someone1234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One idea I've had is to disallow conversation in the app, and instead focus on making date plans if there's a match. You should likely run this idea past a few women. The typical reason they want to converse before meeting is security: Meeting strangers is dangerous and they want to "sniff test" to see if it is safe enough to even go that far. Your app idea largely seems to exist to solve issues men have with datin…

Ironic that people don't want to meet someone off an app without "sniff test" conversation first, yet are happy to meet strangers at a bar with no prior knowledge of them whatsoever. I guess it's just a lingering bias that makes us think "dating app people are creepy" even though today the people you meet in a bar are probably all on dating apps too.

> Ironic that people don't want to meet someone off an app without "sniff test" conversation first, yet are happy to meet strangers at a bar with no prior knowledge of them whatsoever.

Couple possibilities I can think of there. First and foremost, it could be that the people being described before the comma, and the people being described after the comma, are not the same population. There may be some overlap, but I can at least say that the friends I have who've used (non-Tinder) online dating services in any sort of serious way were also very much not the kind of people to go to bars to meet people.

Another is that talking to a stranger at a bar is most decidedly not a date. Evidence: Once upon a time, I did that fairly regularly, and my partner didn't mind at all. (I think that there was only ever one person who was obviously only interested in a hook-up, and, it being a bar, it was pretty easy to gracefully exit that conversation.) I think they would have felt very differently about me signing up for OkCupid.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#162

Post by gilrain » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

john-radio wrote: post #152

jressey wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survivorship Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias I met my wife online after a year of fruitless first dates. Maybe I'm just unappealing or something but it was truly a miserable part of my life. Edit: I'm gonna add in here that most people don't have the stick-to-itiveness that most readers of this site do.

> I met my wife online after a year of fruitless first dates. If you found them all to be so fruitless, never enjoying yourself at all, then yes that does sound kind of unappealing. Sorry to come in here and bust your chops while knowing nothing about you :) But shouldn't dating be enjoyable?

Hey, at least they don't rag on random people and leave sorry-not-sorry smilies like some unappealing folks do.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#163

Post by nradov » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

jressey wrote: post #109

nradov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was it miserable?

Over and over I got excited that I was going to meet a person who ostensibly had a lot in common with me, and it just never was the case. I also continually got the same search results all year.

It's hardly fair to blame the dating service for your unrealistic expectations. Having a lot in common isn't a sound basis for a relationship. Most first dates never turn into anything; that's always been the case and it's just how humans work.

It's not surprising that you got the same results all year. The matching algorithms don't change very quickly.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#164

Post by eej2ya1K » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #139

brenden2 wrote: post #8

I've thought about making a new dating app. The existing apps suck for 2 reasons: in most markets men are at a significant disadvantage because of how men and women differ in the way they approach dating (and there's also a significantly unfair male:female ratio in many markets). Additionally, none of them are really designed to get people off the app, but rather they're built to increase engagement and keep people o…

> in most markets men are at a significant disadvantage because of how men and women differ in the way they approach dating This is such a ridiculous thing to say. A significant disadvantage compared to _who_? Other men? That sort of negates your statement? The women on the platform? Men aren't competing against women on the platform to find a date, for the most part. I think you're sort of dancing around the issue t…

Oh, come on - the top 20% of men are dating the top 80% of women. This is pretty well documented.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#165

Post by abstractbarista » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

vbtemp wrote: post #34

I had an idea for a dating app a while back, in which the basic idea is that you pay the service to message someone (above a free weekly limit of say 1 msg). The pricing would be reactive - as popular attractive people get more messages, the more it would cost to message them, growing exponentially in order to limit incoming messages to approx a few a day. Unpopular people who got few messages would have a price that…

I absolutely love this idea. Do it. Ignore the grumpies suggesting objectification or privilege. It's a market for attention. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#166

Post by scrollaway » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

jressey wrote: post #70

erikpukinskis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more about what’s not working? I’ve been with my girlfriend three years, just bought a car together. It’s going well! We met on OKcupid. I’m a happy customer, though I don’t think I’ve ever paid them anything.

Survivorship Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias I met my wife online after a year of fruitless first dates. Maybe I'm just unappealing or something but it was truly a miserable part of my life. Edit: I'm gonna add in here that most people don't have the stick-to-itiveness that most readers of this site do.

I met a couple of interesting people over the years on OkCupid and Meetic. Three, total. Over nine years. I dated one of them briefly, made excellent friends with another.

I ended up in a now-ended relationship with someone I met in an online forum, and now in a very happy relationship with someone I met at a board game Meetup.

Dating sites made me feel miserable when I used them. Constantly fruitless, frustrating. Any success I've had with them is survivorship bias.

This shouldn't be a numbers game. The fact that it is exacerbates the "inbox bloat" attractive people get.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#167

Post by JimboOmega » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #63

toxik wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s somehow in the nature of dating apps to wax and wane, much like social networks. There’s some sense of novelty and excitement that wears off eventually. I think Tinder will eventually die too, and by the sound of it, already is well on its way.

Can confirm that in the UK, Tinder is pretty terrible. Hinge and Bumble are OK. OKCupid is gently dying under Match.com's tender care, but it's still my favourite because people actually have to say something about themselves. Can also confirm that online dating is a horrible, confidence-destroying nightmare (presumably for both sexes).

> Can also confirm that online dating is a horrible, confidence-destroying nightmare (presumably for both sexes).

It is, though it's more the overall culture it has created than online dating itself. The culture where there's always more and better options so you shouldn't commit to anything, where cancelling plans is just a text away so nobody takes them seriously. It's infested even non-dating relationships and is quite confidence destroying to have people cancel on you constantly.

Also, when I changed genders the dynamic did shift a lot, but it's still confidence destroying. As a male-identified person it was very hard to get matches and the whole process was a tremendous amount of work. As a female identified person (though still dating women) the number of matches I have is basically infinite. Most of the other steps are easier too, though it is still a fair amount of work to get someone to show up. But when they do, it's rare to find people looking for emotional intimacy. It's much easier to wind up feeling used (as an experiment or otherwise). Queer drama is crushing in its own unique way.

Even if you are reasonably attractive and desirable, people still want to invest the minimum, play the numbers game, and not commit to anything. Even if you're 90th percentile, that still means 1 in 10 are more than you, so you can keep re-rolling; why not? I'm absolutely not immune to doing this myself; my standard for "Someone for tonight" is worlds apart from "Someone to have a relationship with", but it's not exactly like I'd disclose that up front, even if I immediately know what category my date is in.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#168

Post by jessaustin » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

kjlrkew wrote: post #136

derialstrazus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see where you're coming from, but I think in practice this is not a great idea. Even if it's not intentional, it's not going to be great publicity when you have an app that shows different women with different price tags. I imagine it's not great either if, on current dating apps, the number of messages women receive becomes public information. The problem here is less that different women cost different prices…

Yep. I can already imagine The Guardian titles: - Disgusting new dating app literally puts a price on woman. When will woman objectification stop? - In this racist dating app it costs more to message white woman than black woman. It will be a disaster, and the author will lose his job.

Ha! I like how these hypothetical complaints contradict each other...

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#169

Post by api » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

In our coworking space in Orange County, CA we had a guy come in for an app pitch fest with an app for dating for Mercedes Benz owners.

The idea was that the app would be for men -- only men -- who own Benzes, and for female users it would show men in Benzes within a certain number of miles.

Between drags off a bottle of beer (and while thoroughly drunk) he fielded a question from one of the attendees: "what sort of profile does the user create?"

"Profile? He's driving a Mercedes!" (big drag off beer)

I'm on the fence about whether the whole thing was a joke but he apparently did prototype the app, and given the nature of the current timeline I have completely lost the ability to tell the difference between jokes, trolls, satire, and reality. Other attendees were similarly on the fence about seriousness.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#170

Post by netsharc » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #72

vbtemp wrote: post #34

I had an idea for a dating app a while back, in which the basic idea is that you pay the service to message someone (above a free weekly limit of say 1 msg). The pricing would be reactive - as popular attractive people get more messages, the more it would cost to message them, growing exponentially in order to limit incoming messages to approx a few a day. Unpopular people who got few messages would have a price that…

There is a reason movies don't price based on popularity. Because it sends a subtle (and not so subtle) signal of popularity. People would rather do without than do something unpopular. The people with the low prices would still not get messages, because who wants to message someone so unpopular that you're the only one interested in them?

Hah, just like in that Black Mirror episode, where the main character avoids interacting with the waiter with a 3.x rating for fear of being judged by others as someone of lower status (score).

Alain de Botton has an illuminating documentary about status (2h30m version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g, 5m version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iipn6yM43sM)