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Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

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Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an approximately equal amount of men and women in the population. How is it possible that so many matches are "low quality" for women?

For starters, the pool of people on say, Tinder, for example, is already disproportionately imbalanced in terms of represented populations (as I said, 10:1). Assuming an even distribution of “attractiveness” (which obviously isn’t straightforward to quantify and varies by locale), there’s already a huge discrepancy: even a woman of average attractiveness (of ten women 1-10, she ranks a 5) has fifty (given ten women,…

Thanks for the detailed reply. This matches my experience fairly well.

With the dynamics of the game laid out the way you said, do you see any reason to right swipe on someone of a relatively similar attractiveness to you? Or given it’s current parameters, does it always make more sense for women to try to match “up” and aim for men objectively more attractive than them?

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#112

Interesting experiment. Traditionally when people reach the point of wanting to pay money to get a wife, they travel to some less well off country and buy a wife from there.

Yea---but do you want to go through life wondering if it's a comfortable life, or he truely likes you?

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#113

Whatever happened to just asking pretty girls you see on dates? That’s how I met my wife. Total stranger, gave her my number and asked her out for coffee. Been married ten years now.

There are dozens (probably hundreds) of articles demonizing men for interacting with women in public they do not know. Your comment sounds a lot like "Look the hiring manager in the eye and give him a firm handshake" advice that's half a century out of date. We no longer live in the type of high trust society where such casual interactions are welcomed or even socially acceptable. Perhaps that still exists in a small town that could be part of a Hallmark movie but in the typical contemporary urban center, you're just as likely to end up on someone's "I don't owe you my attention" tiktok video as you are to have a mutually positive interaction.

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#114
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to call out the technical founders here, Chris Coyne and Max Krohn, because they've done nothing but leave a legacy of abandoned products in the hands of untrustworthy companies: in the case of OkCupid they sold to Match.com which devastated the site committing it to the same wastebasket as Match.com's portfolio of other predatory dating products. Then they created Keybase, which was fantastic, before s…

Building new things is fun, maintaining what you've built not as much. I suspect most software people would agree.

Leaving aside the fun, maintaining them is also often not economically rewarding compared to building the next new thing. I dare say the founders of these sites will be happy enough with their decision even if they are called out once or twice in comment threads by critics with no skin in the game.

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#115
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For somone who's never used a dating app, he seems to have a fairly good idea.

Why do you think that? Nothing really matters until you meet up in person and once you do, how you planned it doesn't really matter. It isn't some backpage transaction, there isn't any commitment or investment before you meet up. If you want to leave you leave.

The 'fast-food of realtionships' sums it up pretty well. However, if you disagree and have found otherwise then I respect that too.

Personally, it's not for me but then I have been single for a while so I'm not really qualified to criticise.

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#116
post #43
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentives of dating apps are all wrong for the daters. They want to maximize users, which means they want you to keep dating through the app forever. Finding you a great long term match is, from their perspective, losing a repeat customer . Ironically the old fashioned matchmaker who only took a fee after the wedding had much better aligned incentives.

>>Ironically the old fashioned matchmaker who only took a fee after the wedding had much better aligned incentives. And that, right there, is probably the key principle for a solid matchmaking app...

The incentives for marriage in society today (atleast here) make this less of a financially viable thing:

- less social pressure to get married than for my grandparents

- less financial incentive through tax benefits already applying if you live together here (to not prefer any religous belief system)

edit: formatting

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#117
post #29

Whatever happened to just asking pretty girls you see on dates? That’s how I met my wife. Total stranger, gave her my number and asked her out for coffee. Been married ten years now.

That approach for most folks is a) really daunting b) usually extremely low odds of success. It's one thing if it's someone in a social circle, however big. Total stranger? Seems to only result in frustration for most folks.

The odds of success are probably higher then using one of the now common dating apps.

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a 45yo straight male, I’ve found women are eager to set up a meeting within the first five or so messages, sometimes even hinting at it by the 2nd message… all I have to say is something like “it says we’re 15 miles apart, what part of town are you in?” and they’ll suggest meeting somewhere in the middle. Of course I’m dealing with an older than primary demographic (30-50), which might have something to do with it…

> I’ve found women are eager to set up a meeting within the first five or so messages, sometimes even hinting at it by the 2nd message That's probably because they've had enough experience to become aware of "the great lie" with all of these approaches to dating, and are tired of wasting time with it. That is, the fantasy that the online conversation actually has any real meaning whatsoever. No matter how much time y…

While I agree with this in spirit, it isn’t the experience I had back in the early days of OLD before it became mainstream - I regularly got pushback for suggesting meeting up too early… there seemed to be a trust issue or maybe being too expedient meant looking for a hookup.

It’s certainly a component for sure, esp as the marketplace is so hard for guys meaning they’re willing to go to greater lengths to stand out… but I feel this is more an issue of the process being so transactional and transitory.

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#119
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to call out the technical founders here, Chris Coyne and Max Krohn, because they've done nothing but leave a legacy of abandoned products in the hands of untrustworthy companies: in the case of OkCupid they sold to Match.com which devastated the site committing it to the same wastebasket as Match.com's portfolio of other predatory dating products. Then they created Keybase, which was fantastic, before s…

Building new things is fun, maintaining what you've built not as much. I suspect most software people would agree.

You could call okcupid feature complete. Keybase however still had plenty of exciting greenfield work to do (IMO) - my friend and I emailed them asking to pay for KBFS but the founders declined!

Re: Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

#120
post #74
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone overthinks things but this really is a good option. I’ve also been with my wife over ten years so maybe I’m not the authority any more. But even back then online dating was a thing but I had zero success with it. But it always seemed as a man, women basically gave you +2 in attractiveness just for having the confidence to go up and introduce yourself. Seemed crazy to throw those free points away so I just ps…

> But it always seemed as a man, women basically gave you +2 in attractiveness just for having the confidence to go up and introduce yourself. In my experience, you are 110% correct. I first saw my wife giving a speech and remembered her name. Two weeks later, I went up and introduced myself, with "Hello, , my name is . Thank you for your [speech] about ." There are a few interesting things about what she noticed. Fi…

Congrats. Well, you are confident when it matters!
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