Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts • Hacker News Board

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#91

Post by Gooblebrai » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 10:00 AM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #68

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the secret is "clearly better than anyone I've got". If I have nobody, and you introduce me to someone, then it's simple. They're absolutely worth pursuing. If I have one or two "maybes", and you introduce me to someone, it's easy for them to be clearly better than anyone I've got, and therefore clearly "the one", at least the one to pursue right now. But if you give me one hundred, then there probably isn't…

> If I have nobody, and you introduce me to someone, then it's simple. They're absolutely worth pursuing. Not quite. No matter how badly you want a relationship, I guarantee there exist potential partners with whom a relationship would make your life worse, not better. And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous potential partners is most people .

> And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous potential partners is most people.

Care to expand on why?

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#92

Post by contrarian1234 » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 10:03 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #78

johnfn wrote: post #38

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…

> Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps don't suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? Yes. The reality is well known. PlentyOfFish used to publish statistics. About 10% of dating app users are "date bacon" and find matches they like. Everyone else is a dissatisfied loser. The losers provide the repeat business and…

I thought the Navy Seal thing was to impress other men. Does it have sex appeal? Probably depends on your social circle.. but I'd think being ex-military as highly unattractive (more violent than the average person, and highly likely to have trauma)

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#93

Post by bell-cot » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 10:21 AM UTC

contrarian1234 wrote: post #92

Animats wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps don't suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? Yes. The reality is well known. PlentyOfFish used to publish statistics. About 10% of dating app users are "date bacon" and find matches they like. Everyone else is a dissatisfied loser. The losers provide the repeat business and…

I thought the Navy Seal thing was to impress other men. Does it have sex appeal? Probably depends on your social circle.. but I'd think being ex-military as highly unattractive (more violent than the average person, and highly likely to have trauma)

I'd assume that those guys (falsely claiming to have been Seals) were poor judges of what women find appealing.

Or too wrapped up in their own machismo to particularly care.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#94

Post by thenthenthen » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 10:28 AM UTC

That filter graph: looks attractive and is not insane, i feel the last part could be its own category. I am prolly insane as well, but I would say 90% of my ‘dates’ through apps were, completely and utterly mental. The other 10% were amazing and friends for life!

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#95

Post by bjackman » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 10:41 AM UTC

Seattle3503 wrote: post #75

People come to dating apps for all sorts of reasons, and with different levels of investment. Pretty much every woman I know who has used a dating app has said she has gone on a dating app to alleviate boredom. That's probably not fun for the person on the other end if they are actually trying to find a partner. If someone shows up to a speed dating event, that indicates minimum level of investment in the interaction…

I think this is an inevitable side effect of the business model. I signed up for these apps to find love, that's the "strategic" reason I use them. But 99 of the time, the actual reason in the moment that I opened the app is for a dopamine hit.

This is a double-edged sword because if the apps hadn't been addictive I just wouldn't have used them that much and I would have ended up with less dates. On the other hand, it obviously plays a part in the toxic underpinnings that make the whole experience so miserable in the long run

Hard to see how you can really address this with design. E.g. OkCupid didn't use to have this dopamine-driven property at least back in the day when I first used it. I found it fucking boring, I didn't invest enough time into it, and ultimately I never met anyone in person (sure, I think part of the reason was also the people I saw there also seemed boring, but that can't be completely orthogonal).

Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#96

Post by JackSlateur » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 10:45 AM UTC

contrarian1234 wrote: post #92

Animats wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps don't suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? Yes. The reality is well known. PlentyOfFish used to publish statistics. About 10% of dating app users are "date bacon" and find matches they like. Everyone else is a dissatisfied loser. The losers provide the repeat business and…

I thought the Navy Seal thing was to impress other men. Does it have sex appeal? Probably depends on your social circle.. but I'd think being ex-military as highly unattractive (more violent than the average person, and highly likely to have trauma)

Are not (some) women attracted to bad boys ?

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#97

Post by imtringued » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 10:55 AM UTC

kesor wrote: post #69

So ... dating apps just need to remove text messages and replace them with voice messages. Problem solved. Thanks!

Isn't it weird that they are called online dating apps and you can't date people online on them? You know, doing things like video calls. It's like Omegle and Discord are the actual apps where you get to date, whereas the dating apps are where you beg for attention.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#98

Post by rendaw » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 10:57 AM UTC

DaSHacka wrote: post #16

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…

I've been around someone trying to get into dating apps, he just started asking us to "take a picture of him real quick" while we're doing outings with the bois "so I can out it on tinder". I assume most people are this way, you just have others start taking pictures of the things you normally do (but didnt normally take pictures of) when you feel the need to make/flesh out a profile.

I've asked friends before, but the photos they took were uniformly terrible.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#99

Post by CuriouslyC » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 11:03 AM UTC

parpfish wrote: post #14

10000truths wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is often parroted, but the reasoning is flawed. The vast majority of the platform's growth will come from new users, who are entering the dating scene. If they fail to capture that audience (say, by having a reputation of not performing as advertised), then no amount of upsells or string-alongs of existing users will sustain them, as their user base will only ever decrease, and investors will see that and withdr…

And to add to that- seeing a real world friend go on dates or start a relationship because of an app is better than any marketing you could ever buy. If you want to drive top-of-the-funnel growth, make the product good even it causes some folks to drop out once they’re in a relationship.

They don't need that. What option do most young people have?

Most young men can't approach women, most young women can't handle being approached and we don't have shared spaces where people can get to know each other and pair off anymore. Young people think the apps are dumpster fires, they hate them, but the alternative is sadly worse.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#100

Post by CuriouslyC » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 11:12 AM UTC

johnfn wrote: post #38

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…

Dating apps 100% suck. I'm a good looking guy and I put the effort into getting great pictures and optimizing my profile to the point I was able to get dates 5+ nights a week and date 2-3 new women a week, and while it was validating, the quality of dates was significantly worse than what I used to get from just approaching women in places like bookstores, after yoga classes, etc when that wasn't as culturally abnormal.

Ironically I met my wife while I was on a date with another woman. We had a much better organic connection, and she was way hotter than almost all the girls on the apps.