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The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

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Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#191

Post by polymatter »

jacques_chester wrote: post #166
btilly wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most dating websites are shitty for heterosexual men in their early to mid twenties. I think it is dating that is shitty for men in that range. They have a limited pool of women in an age range that most of them want to be involved with. Those women in turn have socially acceptable dating opportunities with men of a much wider age range, including many men with better financial means than most men in their ea…

It's common to blame it entirely on financial means. I think older men also tend to know themselves better. After a few decades you've grown into your own personality; you have good enough friends that there's no mad hustle to be what other people want you to be. So you're comfortable in your skin. And that shows. I've had dates at the same sort of cafés I'd have gone to as a younger man, so it's not as though I'm us…

To younger self: ^this

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#192

Post by mikeash »

JDGM wrote: post #190
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you on the West Coast of the USA? It could just be that your problem is that single-male and single-female populations have segregated themselves geographically, as in the US. Over there, the West Coast has a huge surplus of single males, the East Coast has a huge surplus of single females, and as you move towards the center of the country (where I think people are less geographically mobile, and thus less self-s…

If I understand you and your parent correctly then what you're each implying about differences in numbers of single men seeking women and single women seeking men within a given area appears to violate at least one of a few basic and seemingly-reasonable assumptions: 1. The ratio of females to males is very close to 1 anywhere in the country. 2. Heterosexuality, homosexuality, etc. is about the same in males and fema…

#1 is an incorrect assumption:

http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/IMAGES/gender-fig4....

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#193

Post by AnthonyMouse »

JDGM wrote: post #190
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you on the West Coast of the USA? It could just be that your problem is that single-male and single-female populations have segregated themselves geographically, as in the US. Over there, the West Coast has a huge surplus of single males, the East Coast has a huge surplus of single females, and as you move towards the center of the country (where I think people are less geographically mobile, and thus less self-s…

If I understand you and your parent correctly then what you're each implying about differences in numbers of single men seeking women and single women seeking men within a given area appears to violate at least one of a few basic and seemingly-reasonable assumptions: 1. The ratio of females to males is very close to 1 anywhere in the country. 2. Heterosexuality, homosexuality, etc. is about the same in males and fema…

I think the reason for the difference is pretty clear. By the West Coast the parent really means Silicon Valley and Washington, the major tech hubs. In Silicon Valley in particular, that is the industry. And, of course, plenty of the employees are imported from other areas, and the professional gender balance in this industry skews overwhelmingly male. So it creates a corresponding gender imbalance in the surrounding geography.

And those non-native employees come from somewhere, which is predominantly the East Coast, because companies can pick up employees from there who are U.S. citizens and have attended good universities. So it makes those populations skew slightly female.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#194

Post by [deleted] »

curt wrote: post #26

The problem with online dating boils down to: guys have no idea what they are doing. I've helped my friends and the secret is to write a three sentence message: an intro about why the message, a funny sentence, and finally a light question. It's pretty simple. I used it on OkCupid and got about a 30-50% response rate. Now I'm 6'8" and in shape which skewed the results but my friends copied what I did and their respon…

[deleted]

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#195

Post by p2w »

henrikschroder wrote: post #37
p2w wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ha! no shit. after almost two decades of marriage i laugh my ass off at this online dating stuff. what a farce. it's a perfect metaphor for the shallow cesspool our culture has become...

So you've never actually used any online dating service the past 20 years, but you still think you are qualified to dismiss it all as a farce? I have several friends who met their significant others online, and are now happily married with children. But you just laugh...?

i'm happy for your friends, but as a practical matter they are very likely outliers in the statistical sense.

to put it in the perspective of this forum, all of my VC buddies put online dating plays in the category of domain specific search. that's a fairly sterile way to look at the process of finding a life partner, don't you think?

but beyond that, there is no credible statistical data, i.e. stats not produced by the companies themselves and peer reviewed, that would indicate these services produce anything like a non-niche impact on the occurrence of marriage in the US.

there are however numerous more deliberate commentaries on the topic of technology and its impact on the social fabric of culture. one of my personal favs is "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle.

The more interesting question in all of this is why exactly online dating functions are even viable. IMHO the fact that people, particularly in the business we are in (i'm assuming you are in the software biz as well) spend so much time chained to a desk that they cannot go out and actually interact physically with other human beings is the point of my original response.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#196

Post by crazygringo »

Udo wrote: post #171

Another question is, of course, if straight dating can be fixed at all. After short stints on all the major dating websites, and of course trying to date in the real world, I've come to believe that the basic expectations people have can't really be satisfied, mostly by virtue of mathematics. The following is a male perspective, but I think the observations should be on par for the other side as well: First, there is…

It's funny... here in New York City, I hear people saying the exact opposite. That guys are having a great time on a dating site, because there are tons of attractive and interesting women, and all the single girls seem to create profiles! And girls not having a lot of luck on a dating site, because a lot of guys don't create profiles, and sometimes it seems like all the "good" ones are taken.

However, this may also be a function of age -- I'm in my early thirties, as are my friends. And of course, New York City.

I do think you're right about "online dating works well for people who are already likely to be successful at dating" -- in my experience, whether it's online or offline is irrelevant. Online dating isn't any fundamentally different at all -- people are attracted to each other, or not. Online dating just vastly widens the pool of potential people you might meet. You might see 100 people in a bar one night, and 90% are immediately out of your age/gender range, leaving just 10. You could easily browse through 200 filtered candidates on a dating site in an evening.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#197

Post by erikj54 »

"That might be partially true, but that's like deciding not to swing for fear of getting a strike."

Hmm, not quite. It is more like not trying to swing for the fence, and trying to hit a double or single. Every once and a while you connect right in the "sweet spot" and the ball flys over the fence.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#198

Post by JDGM »

mikeash wrote: post #192
JDGM wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand you and your parent correctly then what you're each implying about differences in numbers of single men seeking women and single women seeking men within a given area appears to violate at least one of a few basic and seemingly-reasonable assumptions: 1. The ratio of females to males is very close to 1 anywhere in the country. 2. Heterosexuality, homosexuality, etc. is about the same in males and fema…

#1 is an incorrect assumption: http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/IMAGES/gender-fig4....

Aha, I did not realise that. How interesting. Thanks!

The values on that map are a little frustrating, have we got anything which offers more precision for those enormous 1-91 and 108-205 ranges? I look at that and think "Across the country the ratio could only vary between about 9 men for every 10 women and 9 women for every 10 men and the diagram would still be totally correct - is that even really significant?".

("Is that even really significant?" is a whole other question that I'm sure someone can easily answer. I don't have any intuition about how skewed a gender ratio has to be for it to be noticeable to a member of that population, certainly if someone told me that there were only 9 women for every 10 men in a city I wouldn't immediately think my chances of hooking up would be hurt too much...would they?)

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#199

Post by mikeash »

JDGM wrote: post #198
mikeash wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 is an incorrect assumption: http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/IMAGES/gender-fig4....

Aha, I did not realise that. How interesting. Thanks! The values on that map are a little frustrating, have we got anything which offers more precision for those enormous 1-91 and 108-205 ranges? I look at that and think "Across the country the ratio could only vary between about 9 men for every 10 women and 9 women for every 10 men and the diagram would still be totally correct - is that even really significant?". (…

I think that the places covered by those enormous ranges can be fairly comfortably assumed to almost all be close to 91 and 108.

As for a 9:10 ratio, it all depends on the rate of committed relationships. Remember that this is all people, married, committed, and single. If they're all single, 9:10 is probably pretty good. If 95% of people are in a committed relationship (ignoring homosexuality, which probably cancels out) then you have no hope at all. If we pick a more sane number like, say, 75% (not sure how sane, but...) then that results in about the singles scene having about a 2:3 ratio, which is not so great for the people on the 3 side.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#200

Post by calinet6 »

djcapelis wrote: post #101
ahh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So...90% of people, give or take, are straight. Online dating is a clusterfuck of failure for straight people (ask anyone who's tried it, or the OP.) Online dating mostly works for gays and lesbians (you say so, I've seen the same from others.) And this guy is an idiot for trying to cater to the straight dating market? Precisely why?

> So...90% of people, give or take, are straight. And a lot of those straight people may one day get involved with, have been involved with or may find themselves interested in someone who isn't straight. Many of whom are bi (or queer or whatever label) and most of whom do very very much care about being on a site that doesn't just serve straight people since they're open to dating both straight and non-straight folk…

> Also, I have a fair number of straight friends, a lot of them appreciate OKC a lot and use it regularly with good results.

+1 for OkCupid working just fine for straight people.

I have had great success (just hit 1 year with someone I met on OkCupid, truly a great girl).

I know two marriages which were a result of OkCupid, one couple got married in France (not that it matters, they're just really cool). Most of the couples that met online that I know are quite good matches (IMHO quality > quantity anyway).

> The people I hear complaining about it most often are usually people who are just angry about the fact that they can't get dates... online or offline.

This is exactly it, in my opinion. OkCupid, and other dating sites, will help you meet more people. They will not magically improve your dating life. That's up to you, and it starts with improving yourself and your social skills outside of the dating world.

You need to be an attractive person before you expect someone to want to be with you, and you have complete control over that; it has nothing to do with your looks and predestined characteristics, and everything to do with your attitude and personality. That may sound hokey, but it's entirely true.

I think the site is a cool and fun way to meet people in a different way. I don't think it's ground-breaking or magically going to fix any dating problems, straight or gay. You might meet a few more people, but you'll still have to be actually interesting and good at dating if you want to go anywhere from there.

In other words, it's like someone complaining about not being able to get anywhere in a car because they don't have a map, and making a car with five wheels and a musical horn instead. If you still don't have a map, it ain't gonna help you.

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