Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The dating app paradox

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 570 posts

Re: The dating app paradox

#231

Post by user_7832 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #217
not2b wrote: 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…

By standard Economic theory, that is not a stable strategy, since it incentivises starting new dating apps. It only has to be moderately successful to ensure a profitable exit. Over time, Match would run out of money. Given that Economists overwhelmingly get these things right more than our intuitions, I'm really curious what explanations they have.

> since it incentivises starting new dating apps

It might, but there are lots of sticky things in human behaviour. A person fully aware of the situation in your statement, and only looking for money may do so, but the vast majority of people (off HN) likely do not have the skills (tech/business), do not care about the skills, might not want to start a company or simply are happy enough with their life to not want to rock the boat too much.

Here's a mathematical question: if you could flip a coin, with a 50% chance of getting a billion dollars, and a 50% chance of never having more than $1000 in your bank, would you flip the coin?

The "mathematically correct" answer would be to take the bet, but the rational decision any well-settled person would take is very likely not to flip.

Re: The dating app paradox

#233

Post by user_7832 »

notfed wrote: post #197
devit wrote: 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…

> Committed relationships found by judging other people's personality and looks are completely unnatural for human beings Citation? This is an extraordinary claim.

I think a better way to rephrase this is "judging 10s/100s of people in a few minutes, at days on end."

Judging people for looks isn't new, but being picky is easier if there are 1000 options easily available. In pre-internet times there was a much harder limit on how many people you could choose from.

Btw tangentially related is the secretary problem - trying to select how many people to reject before selecting the statistically best choice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem).

Re: The dating app paradox

#234

Post by baobabKoodaa »

lazide wrote: post #196
jstarfish wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I investigate these complaints for a living. Please don't date anybody you work with. We'll both be happier for it. The fun always starts after a breakup and the other party doesn't want to see you at work anymore. There is usually no penalty for falsely reporting anyone to HR for harassment "in good faith," and there are likely anti-retaliation policies protecting malicious claimants from punishment for "misrepresen…

It’s not just work - it’s any community venue that other party considers ‘essential’. Church, Dr’s offices, the gym, even a grocery store (if they ‘need it’) is a potential social ‘war zone’. Oh, and Reddit too.

Quitting a gym has lower cost than quitting a job, though. Especially if the "quitting" does not occur in amicable circumstances.

Re: The dating app paradox

#235

Post by user_7832 »

Exoristos wrote: post #119
rowyourboat wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always so confused by the advice to go to bookstores to meet people. What kind of bookstores do you guys go to where the customers talk with each other?

Being able to start a friendly conversation under circumstances where an average male might fail is a prime sign of date-ability. While humans are very complicated, the general animal rule that males must impress females still exists at some level in some form.

> Being able to start a friendly conversation under circumstances where an average male might fail is a prime sign of date-ability.

Under this assumption, would the average man be undateble?

(Not that I agree or disagree with the rest, but this seems odd to me.)

Re: The dating app paradox

#236

Post by kwhitefoot »

prepend wrote: post #226
Syonyk wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to for-profit, ad-driven, surveillance capitalism companies with a demonstrated interest in short term profits and hoovering all the data they can? Yeah. I'd be willing to take that risk. Don't get me wrong. I don't think the government is a good group to do this. I just think they're a less-bad group than the usual parties.

I have never used a government web site that was better than a marginal ad driven site. I can barely pay my trash bill and can’t imagine a dating app run by any aspect of US federal, state, or local government.

Try websites run by other governments.

Re: The dating app paradox

#237

Post by baobabKoodaa »

nvarsj wrote: post #190
trashface wrote: post #56

A couple years ago, post pandemic, I tried these apps for the first time in my life (mid forties), and I had the what is apparently the typical hetero male experience of no matches. It wasn't bad dates or ghosting or catfishing all that stuff you read about. Just no dates, no chats even. Gave up after a few months and deleted them, I doubt I'll ever go back on there. Its perhaps controversial, but I definitely didn't…

The way these apps work, you pretty much have to pay as a guy. It's like a club where women get in free. The algorithms will derank you very fast unless you're a 10/10 male, and you will basically get no matches from then on. Most guys who are successful on dating apps are paying for it.

If you're not paying for the product, you...

Re: The dating app paradox

#238

Post by pertymcpert »

prepend wrote: post #226
Syonyk wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to for-profit, ad-driven, surveillance capitalism companies with a demonstrated interest in short term profits and hoovering all the data they can? Yeah. I'd be willing to take that risk. Don't get me wrong. I don't think the government is a good group to do this. I just think they're a less-bad group than the usual parties.

I have never used a government web site that was better than a marginal ad driven site. I can barely pay my trash bill and can’t imagine a dating app run by any aspect of US federal, state, or local government.

gov.uk is widely regarded as being better than private websites. You can do anything there and the UI doesn't suck.

it doesn't have to be bad, it just needs some effort and thought.

Re: The dating app paradox

#239

Post by miki123211 »

fourseventy wrote: post #182
Exoristos wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well as regulating them, Western governments might want to actually fund high-quality, not-for-profit dating systems of some kind. Improved health for citizens, lessened extremism, not to mention possibly boosted population growth could result.

You want to put the government in control of who we date? No thanks.

That's not the best way to do it IMO, subsidies for dating apps that facilitate successful, long-term relationships would be a far better idea.

Have a law that lets citizens specify on which app they met their partner when getting married, and have the government pay a small (to the tune of $10) monthly subsidy to the makers of that app for as long as that marriage lasts. $10 per month per couple is not a lot of money for a government in the grand scheme of things, and the benefits to population growth and plain human happiness are incalculable.

Re: The dating app paradox

#240

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

> Basically, a new app starts up, and hopeless romantics looking for real love begin flocking to it. But so do sleazy types who lie on their dating profiles.

That pretty much sums up every social media site. Hasn't seemed to happen here, but I'm sure it's because of damn good moderation. A quick shufti through New, shows a lot of spammers and hypers, pushing their wares, just like they do, in LinkedIn, and StackOverflow.

Post reply on HN