Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts • Hacker News Board

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#141

Post by plasticsoprano » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 3:19 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #130

rendaw wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ask women (ideally an Asian woman) and they will take pictures in the top 10% or better of what an average person can take. The only more reliable group are professional photographers - and consider that zoomers prefer iPhone or even Kodak style of photos vs a Sony or canon ultra realistic style

I would say, instead of "ideally an Asian woman", a millennial woman. Was recently in a tourist spot for a work outing, we asked a random person to take our photo in front of the big monument and the photos were awful, including a finger of the photographer in each photo. This woman was in easily 50+. Gave the phone to a passing millennial aged woman and got 10 well compositioned photos in both landscape and portrait mode.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#142

Post by Aaargh20318 » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 3:23 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #129

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’re weird. The vast majority of instagram using women take so many photos that the joke is that “the camera eats first”. I’m actively exhausted when I go out with my partner because I know that I’m going to take lots of photos. I’d love to be in a world where this is so rare that people can’t even explain where the photos go: but unfortunately I ask the opposite question, which is “where do these people get the ti…

> You’re weird. The vast majority of instagram using women take so many photos that the joke is that “the camera eats first”.

I’m not a woman nor do i use instagram or any other kind of social media.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#143

Post by throwaway2037 » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #102

Alain de Botton claims (probably with only anecdotal evidence) that we tend to find love in people who remind us of the template our parents gave us… so this is an explanation why certain individuals end up attracted to loving terrible people. How would you hope to possibly convey this? Also social proof is such a big deal for women, I think being in public your date can pick up on all sorts of qualities like self wo…

    > I think being in public your date can pick up on all sorts of qualities like self worth and confidence that are extremely difficult to convey on dating apps…

In my personal experience, when I meet people from dating apps, there is a huge disconnect between "online charm" and "in-person charm". So much so, that I now try to arrange an in-person meeting ASAP when I connect with someone. You really know very quickly if the other person is showing enthusiasm and effort, and if you have a connection.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#144

Post by thwarted » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 3:39 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #114

foofoo12 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one makes more money There's this joke about a man in his 40s. He goes to the gym and asks the instructor which machine he should use to look more attractive to young ladies. The instructor looks at him and says "you'd do well by using the ATM outside".

When I ask myself who in my friends circles has had the happiest, longest lasting relationships it almost never were the guys with the money. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean the inverse is true and you score big time if you are an ugly bum. It just means other qualities matter often more than men think. Being a kind guy, having humor, being emotionally reliable (meaning you're emotionally stable and not easily…

Money (or access to money) is often a proxy for a certain kind of stability and access to leisure, two things that many people strive for.

But the joke wasn't about long term, successful relationships. The guy was interested in looking attractive. That could have any kind of relationship goal, from one night stands to marriage, or even meeting someone who could introduce them to even more people.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#145

Post by derbOac » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 3:51 PM UTC

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #116

KolibriFly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paradox of choice feels like one of those concepts that sounds trivial until you live it. Dating apps amplify it to an absurd degree

It’s impressive to me how many people mistake relationships for a choice issue when it’s entirely a building in common thing. Obviously, having a shared vision or the ability to built one initially matter but the rest is very much work. At this point in my life, I’m fairly convinced that some people would be able to build a successful relationship with nearly anyone while other are doomed to fail even with the "perfe…

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#146

Post by ta12653421 » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

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…

By far absolutely _not_ true:

- i have worked in the space for some years for two of the biggest platforms in my country

- dating sites track a lot KPI and discuss them and test them thoroughly

- the KPI "do-more-users-leave-our-platform-earlier-if-our-matching-algo-is-just-too-good" - I promise: In alle the years, this question WAS NEVER - NEVER!!!!!!! - raised, regardless wich Manager or which Exec. This metric isnt even debated.

And here comes why: the most important thing to form a relationship are "technicals" which can NEVER be introduced into an app. There may be some advances in genomic matching, but no body deployed this so far and it wont happen unless Apple watch as a gene encoding module.

There are one night stands, there some marriges (we had a "winners board" in our office), but 99% of all cases when people met, its going to be "failure" (in a sense "no match")

Regardless how good your algo is - it doesnt matter when it comes to a reality check.

Therefore, Dating apps have absolutely no fear of you signing off because you fond someome - its very likely that you will come back soon, second: From operators perspective it would be a good thing if people would tell "i found my match on XYZ", but sine this does happen only super rarely, there are only few such stories.

So - NO: Dating sites do fear someone deleting the account.

(except: you are a startup and have to keep every profile to gain some size)

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#147

Post by ta12653421 » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #23

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…

Match's growth peaked a long time ago. The site is now trying to grow by "offering new products" and "cutting operational costs." The relative newcomers - Bumble and Hinge - grew by trying to offer a better experience, especially for women, who are traditionally overwhelmed with unreciprocated interest on conventional apps. Both seem to have admitted defeat now and moved to the usual model. In terms of revenue, the i…

Wrong claim: "There's an opposing network effect of *keeping customers unmatched, because this provides gossip and entertainment among friends, which gives them a reason to continue using a service."

No, this is implying they are doing it with intention - which they dont even have to insist on! They can keep the users, because matching based on an app does not work for 99.99% real cases. So if you treat them well, they will stay anyway, unless your product is shitty.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#148

Post by ta12653421 » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #17

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…

I don't think this counterargument holds. It's a hell of a lot easier to get a customer who already paid once to pay a second time than it is to get a customer to pay for the first time. Also, I think most people are well aware that by and large, dating apps have a very low success rate for the majority of their users. People use them anyway.

Since your marginal costs per customer are veeeery low, you can hammer thm with 50-60% discount, which ends up on most platforms at 10 - 20 bucks per month, and if you make 3 - 4 dinners, you get much more out of it than an evening in the cinema

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#149

Post by zenoprax » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #127

m_fayer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of my self-administered IT education in my early 20s was to feed my film nerdery through exquisite data hoarding. Automation, NASs, media servers, all of it. Curiously, I found that the better I got, the less movies I actually watched. It became more about collecting than engaging. I think this is a corollary to your point: vastly increasing access and reducing our objects of desire to a standardized neatly stor…

I found the way to square the circle of music hoarding is to place your player on full-library shuffle. Music is unique because you can enjoy it while doing other things, such as spamming Hacker News. Movies cannot be appreciated with such divided attention.

> Movies cannot be appreciated with such divided attention.

Have you considered setting up "Ersatz TV" and then configuring dozens of movie channels to never watch?

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#150

Post by CuriouslyC » Sun, Nov 02, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #134

CuriouslyC wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abnorm…

> I was able to get dates 5+ nights a week and date 2-3 new women a week For the record, you are probably well into the top 20% of attractive men on the apps. You should know that your experience is very much unlike the average man. The average normie on dating apps (5/10 in looks) gets, quite literally, zero matches, or matches only from scammers/bots/OnlyFans. There are numerous long-form YouTube videos on the topi…

That's a big part of it. When I met women in person they could get my vibe and know 100% what was on offer, so if they decided they were interested they were in it. I think the uncertainty of meeting someone new tends to linger for a while even if a date goes well, so it creates some dissonance.

There's also just the quality aspect. Hot high value women don't need the apps to get a good suitor, and if they're on the apps even tall successful good looking men face rough odds, since these women can skim the cream of the cream on platforms and usually are looking for the best sugar daddy. In person you can be charming, kind and a good conversationalist, and as long as you meet a woman's bar (which I pretty much always did) you can shortcut the line because you're REAL and here NOW. A bird in the hand an all that...