Live data from Hacker News

The dating app paradox

npr.org

151–160 of 570 posts

Re: The dating app paradox

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd certainly be interested in the literature you have showing nonprofit dating apps reduce extremism, whatever that means.

I haven't looked but I suspect that people in happy loving relationships are less likely to be extremists/terrorists than unhappy people without close ties or people in their lives to check in on their mental well-being.

I haven't looked either, but I think the correlation runs the other way: people likely to be extremists/terrorists have trouble forming happy, loving relationships.

I guess the fact that we disagree reaffirms the parent's point that we should look to studies/research instead of assuming.

Re: The dating app paradox

#152
post #62

For a straight male, you’ll see a surprisingly large number of fake profiles. Anecdotally, women seem to report this too. (Reddit has MANY such posts!) So identity verification is a real problem. As an iPhone user, I’d seriously consider using a dating app that ONLY allowed you to “Sign in with Apple”, in the belief that it’s the “best” way to ensure a real human is behind the sign-in, more-so than email/pwd, or even…

>As an iPhone user, I’d seriously consider using a dating app that ONLY allowed you to “Sign in with Apple”, This way you can also avoid the poor Android users and clear them off the gene pool. /s

> This way you can also avoid the *smart* Android users and clear them off the gene pool.

Re: The dating app paradox

#153
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything. Absolutely everything. When you work hard to always assume the best of the love of your life, it's almost impossible not to miss each and every sign because you dismiss them with prejudice.

Any examples you would be comfortable sharing (ok to change the low level details of the situation)?

I had no access to any financial account, ever. Once I gained access, after the fact, there were nearly $16K in cash advances against a credit card I didn’t even know I had.

Purchased all new dresses.

Purchased workout equipment (rarely, if ever used).

Purchased sex toys and sex-related clothing I never saw used.

5 new credit cards in her name.

Pieces of paper with divorce related info I assumed were for a friend of her’s, certainly not for us.

Would leave for 4+ hours a day, many times a week, to go shopping but never came back with anything.

Would leave our vacation home once a week to do laundry and get mail when she could have done it at a laundromat or had the mail held.

Re: The dating app paradox

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reproduction is sexist. Women bear, and contribute, the lions share of the fetal cost. Not all healthy appearing prime age females can reproduce, obviously. Healthy, young adult, well nourished appearance is still a good indicator towards 9 months of reproductive value.

It's at best an indicator that the woman isn't about to die and could maybe push out a child. Nothing more. That's really not super helpful and I doubt that it's anything remotely close to what most people are thinking about when they swipe and try to get a date with somebody.

I think people date and romance because largely it feels good, and it instinctively feels good because it satisfies certain necessities of life. Some of which necessitate pairing with the opposite sex. I don't expect the masses to be able to explain their instincts,or for their thoughts to explain them.

> That's really not super helpful

But it's more helpful than most of the other social media fast alternatives of someone you don't know well. You won't be getting their medical records. On a thirty second first glance yay/nay a few healthy photos looking good doing aerobic activities is as close as you're going to get to evidence of sexual fitness for fetal survival without asking intrusive and creepy sounding medical questions.

Re: The dating app paradox

#155
post #103

The fact that one company repeatedly bought out its competition and now owns, according the the article, 45 dating apps probably has a lot to do with why they suck. Instead of competing by trying to be better, just buy out the rivals, gut them, and make everything worse. As long as the dominant player has lots of capital to buy any upstarts and the regulatory environment lets them do it, it can be an easier way to ma…

In a free market, if such a company's products are crappy, as you propose, then that means there's an opportunity for anyone that wants to make profit to provide an app that isn't crappy; they'd get rewarded for it.

The question shouldn't be "how do we stop this company", it should be, "why aren't people providing competing, non-crappy, apps?". Let's fix the root issue rather than proposing regulation to regulate a problem that shouldn't exist.

Re: The dating app paradox

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reproduction is sexist. Women bear, and contribute, the lions share of the fetal cost. Not all healthy appearing prime age females can reproduce, obviously. Healthy, young adult, well nourished appearance is still a good indicator towards 9 months of reproductive value.

I can no longer reply to your justifiably flagged and dead ggp. What you wrote there > A healthy presumably fertile body, kempt and sane enough looking that the fetus will survive nine months. also applies to men. Your comments suggest you’re too biased to realize as much.

The fetus can potentially emerge as long as the man sticks around and survived for a few minutes. Not so for the female. The baseline minimal investment is sexist. Perhaps nature should be flagged too.

Re: The dating app paradox

#157
post #5

Quote from the article: > Call it the dating app paradox: dating apps are supposed to be matching lovebirds together, but once they do, the lovebirds fly away — and take their money with them. I wonder if Feeld, Bloom, etc in the ethical non monogamy / polyamorous dating landscape will escape “enshittification” because their happiest users (who find good matches) stick around looking for more friends.

That was sort of my reaction to the article too, like the assumption that "your users want to pair up such as to stop using your app" is an obviously incorrect assumption in many cases.

It also occurred to me that there's also an obvious expansion, which is into couples relationship and sex coaching/therapy/tools. I did some data analysis work with an app company with a lot of parallels to dating apps, and they kind of went that way: they figured out the needs of their users after their initial app was "done" and then offered another app, or expanded app to cover their subsequent needs. They actually did this twice very successfully, by branching out after a major stage of user need, that was the focus of the existing app, had been reached.

These dating companies could easily turn into relationship coaching or therapy or relationship tool apps. There's plenty of possibilities.

Re: The dating app paradox

#158
post #103

The fact that one company repeatedly bought out its competition and now owns, according the the article, 45 dating apps probably has a lot to do with why they suck. Instead of competing by trying to be better, just buy out the rivals, gut them, and make everything worse. As long as the dominant player has lots of capital to buy any upstarts and the regulatory environment lets them do it, it can be an easier way to ma…

In a free market, if such a company's products are crappy, as you propose, then that means there's an opportunity for anyone that wants to make profit to provide an app that isn't crappy; they'd get rewarded for it. The question shouldn't be "how do we stop this company", it should be, "why aren't people providing competing, non-crappy, apps?". Let's fix the root issue rather than proposing regulation to regulate a p…

This ignores a whole swath of complex social dynamics. Plenty of businesses exist that are horrible, but extremely difficult to dethrone. Ticketmaster is probably one of the less controversial examples.

Re: The dating app paradox

#159
post #98

Committed relationships found by judging other people's personality and looks are completely unnatural for human beings, and a result of conditioning by society. The natural state is living immersed in a place where other beings are and spontaneously interacting with them without a developed ego/personality filtering the interaction, as the closest relatives to human (chimpanzees and bonobos) do. This makes the socia…

The tech is superficially premised on the idea that humans will behave the same in captivity. Necessity and familiarity are critical variables in the right environment for pair bonding that can't be replicated through technology that exists to undermine those two things. Technology solves the necessity of people to depend on one another or invest their time in interpersonal experiences; it's easier than ever to shut the world out and not worry about survival. It also allows people to be distant while creating the illusion of connectedness, and people are going to be much less likely to invest in new relationships in that case. Take those things away and all you have is the primitive instinct to act on, which is what today's dating apps are specifically tuned to. If you want more than that, it's almost too bad, because opportunities for the sexes to engage in meaningful shared experiences are few and far between today. You're lucky if you see the same person more than once at a coffee shop. Go to a night club today, and chances are it will be predominantly full of people who for some reason aren't actually interested in having fun or giving anyone a chance outside of their clique. Workplaces are not only far more remote-oriented today but are less hospitable to relationships among coworkers than ever. Meetups are basically a joke now, and let's not even get into the bar.

Younger generations are correct in getting out of the dating app game, even if perhaps it will take a while for people to actually return to meatspace for dating, by and large.

It's said that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but Alfred Lord Tennyson never used a dating app.

Re: The dating app paradox

#160
post #103

The fact that one company repeatedly bought out its competition and now owns, according the the article, 45 dating apps probably has a lot to do with why they suck. Instead of competing by trying to be better, just buy out the rivals, gut them, and make everything worse. As long as the dominant player has lots of capital to buy any upstarts and the regulatory environment lets them do it, it can be an easier way to ma…

In a free market, if such a company's products are crappy, as you propose, then that means there's an opportunity for anyone that wants to make profit to provide an app that isn't crappy; they'd get rewarded for it. The question shouldn't be "how do we stop this company", it should be, "why aren't people providing competing, non-crappy, apps?". Let's fix the root issue rather than proposing regulation to regulate a p…

Money. You make money. That's why people aren't out competing. You get paid money. Lots of money.
Post reply on HN