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Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

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Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#31

Post by johnfn »

ed wrote: post #4

I don’t think speed dating is as popular as submarine[1] articles suggest. But the constraint of being in-person and with a limited set of options may be helpful for some people. The paradox of choice is a significant issue on apps. I do agree that bandwidth is significantly higher in person, we’ve evolved efficient pattern detection, and wish it were more acceptable to meet up for a quick coffee immediately after ma…

Tangential from your point, but I don’t think this is a submarine article. This is just a single blogger. “Submarine article” typically refers to articles written by large news corporations (NYTimes eg) and incentivized by PR firms - none of which applies here.

The reason I mention this is that “submarine article” is typically used to cast suspicion at the aims of the article. I can’t see any reason to do that to this article.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#32

Post by tbossanova »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #7

From the article: > (…) pictures also give lots of information about important non-superficial things, like your personality, values, social class, and lifestyle. This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps: where do all these pictures come from? People seem to have pictures of them doing all kinds of activities. When I’m out with friends doing whatever, no one is taking pictures. Even if they did, i…

You only need a few pictures to fill a profile. Taking a few snaps when doing interesting stuff likely spread over months or years isn’t “documenting every second of our lives”.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#33

Post by roenxi »

The author didn't consider a more basic selection bias that the 3 contradictory facts are driven by different groups of people. That makes it rather easy to reconcile 3 apparently contradictory views. You can't jump-start a new market for a dating app with in-person speed daters because they are the people who refuse to use an app!

And it is worth being a little suspicious of the people who 'hate' dating apps. There are valid criticisms, but the people who are just bad partners are going to turn up somewhere and it might be that pool of people - they tend not to be big on reflecting on their own flaws with rigorous intellectual honesty and would blame the apps.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#34

Post by nkrisc »

zug_zug wrote: post #11

I think it's actually very simple... the paradox of choice. You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a more stable job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity. I think there are certain basic psychological facts…

Commonly called “analysis paralysis”. For most people, I believe, once you have more than a small number of options it’s basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all options to make what seems like a rational and logical decision. So some people will just get frustrated and pick one arbitrarily, or give up and pick none. A small number of people will make a spreadsheet and devote way too much time to over-analyzing the situation, and maybe never come to a satisfactory conclusion.

This applies to almost anything, even “which restaurant should we go to tonight?”

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#35

Post by sqrt_1 »

feoren wrote: post #10
gassi wrote: post #2

I think the author missed an important factor: misaligned incentives. Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and…

[flagged]

I think Japan did this last year https://japandaily.jp/japans-government-initiatives-to-boost...

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#36

Post by aleph_minus_one »

Concerning "dating apps suck": OkCupid was decent in its heyday. But even at that time, there were very few users of it near the city where I lived or even in the country where I lived. Thus, it simply was nevertheless not useful to me. But no other dating site uses a similar algorithm; perhaps most people care about other things in dating than what OkCupid is optimized to give them.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#37

Post by jeffbee »

e2e4 wrote: post #9
gassi wrote: post #2

I think the author missed an important factor: misaligned incentives. Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and…

Facebook dating has different incentives. https://www.facebook.com/dating

The only thing I can dream up less appealing than that would be dating on Nextdoor.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#38

Post by johnfn »

Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps dont suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? (A sad fact is that dating will just suck for some % of the population. Is it possible that if there were no apps the same % would be saying how IRL dating sucks?) I know many people in stable LTRs or married who met through dating apps. But I don’t think you typically find these people participating in discourse about dating apps. If anything they’ve probably moved on to complaining why wedding planners and baby books or whatever suck.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#39

Post by jacob235 »

The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not for the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully curate every part of your first impression. This means that 1) you need to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you come off as the hottest, just that it's all green flags) because otherwise you are not putting your best foot forward, and 2) the dating profile is not reflective of the reality of the person.

This leads into behavior, as you can spend however much time you want vibing and talking through text, but meeting and spending time together in person will invariably be different. This results in two major high-pressure, high-filter events as opposed to the one from initially meeting in person.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#40

Post by HPsquared »

zug_zug wrote: post #11

I think it's actually very simple... the paradox of choice. You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a more stable job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity. I think there are certain basic psychological facts…

There's also something like a "market for lemons" effect where the best people (i.e. those most suitable for relationships and capable of sustaining them) tend to pair off and disappear from the market.
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