61–69 of 69 posts
In the US, the birth rates are so low we are rapidly going extinct, literally. So, from that fact, it is fair to conclude that there are some serious problems with dating . In particular, there are a lot of weak, sick, dead limbs on the tree. Well, likely not nearly for the first time, Darwin is on the case and working on a solution, in this case, likely just a routine application of some old, well proven techniques.
TL/DR: bring back the old OKCupid features. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for it. I’m surprised none of the existing comments contrast the unproductive on-line dating of today with the very successful OKCupid model of the mid 2000s to the mid 2010s. Practically everyone I know ( myself, siblings, and more college friends than I can count on one hand) met their spouse on OKCupid during this time period. The old OKCu…
My memory of okcupid was all the features gave people anxiety, i.e. the heavy users spent all their time on personality quizzes not going out. I also matched 100% with someone I knew who wasn't my type. I think a better feature would've been teaching people how to take better selfies with 2000s cameras.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're probably married. The terminally unpleasant cynical people actually seem to be on here less than they used to - and the ones still here I assume are crypto millionaires now, which always helps.
Married people date too. Ever heard of polyamory? The problem of finding the perfect partner doesn't seem so intractable if you recognize it is completely unreasonable to expect one person to satisfy 100% of your needs for 30 years+.
It's expected to be rare, and the searchers don't have the same feeling of single desperation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You only need one good one. (well, that depends if you're dating to increase your score or not) IIRC from that OKCupid research, women only rated 20% of men as attractive, but then their attractiveness rating didn't actually affect who they responded to, so it didn't really matter. Also, women know better than men that attractiveness is a thing you do not a thing you are.
Attractiveness affected reply rates for men and women about the same.[1] [1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo...
> But with the basic ratings so out-of-whack, the two curves together suggest some strange possibilities for the female thought process, the most salient of which is that the average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Attractiveness affected reply rates for men and women about the same.[1] [1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo...
It's this part: > But with the basic ratings so out-of-whack, the two curves together suggest some strange possibilities for the female thought process, the most salient of which is that the average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Married people date too. Ever heard of polyamory? The problem of finding the perfect partner doesn't seem so intractable if you recognize it is completely unreasonable to expect one person to satisfy 100% of your needs for 30 years+.
Isn't that just, like, Berkeley? But also, they don't complain it's hard to find a unicorn, right? It's expected to be rare, and the searchers don't have the same feeling of single desperation.
Because they are always hunting, they have a high profile.
Other poly people are pretty boring and have pretty normal ideas about love except that they believe (and know) you can love more than one person at a time. Such a person tends to keep a low profile and is going to get confused with bigamists, cheating monogamists, etc.
Thus it is more like cheating among mono people (who also use online dating) which is not exceptionally rare. The difference is that you aren’t cheating.
The poly community isn’t much of a community because there are big moral differences between the participants: unicorn hunters are a running gag but you have many sad couples where somebody was cheating and then forced the other to accept it. If you fly the poly flag you’ll attract a lot of people you don’t want to know so some think it is like ‘Fight Club’.
Not everything can be solved with technology. Not every human behavior is a problem to be solved. Part of the fun of being human is all the messiness that comes with having autonomy and precisely not behaving like a mindless inanimate object subject only to physical and natural laws. Trying to “solve” human behaviors is effectively equivalent to trying to dehumanize humanity (even though it isn’t fun, of course , to…
One might say that online dating is an example of technology being a problem, not being a solution.
Not everything can be solved with technology. Not every human behavior is a problem to be solved. Part of the fun of being human is all the messiness that comes with having autonomy and precisely not behaving like a mindless inanimate object subject only to physical and natural laws. Trying to “solve” human behaviors is effectively equivalent to trying to dehumanize humanity (even though it isn’t fun, of course , to…
One might say that online dating is an example of technology being a problem, not being a solution.