11–20 of 373 posts
> To me, if you are a guy on a dating app and your pictures are not taken by a professional photographer then you are losing your time, and if you are paying you are also throwing your money. Don't do this. You need good pictures that convey attractiveness (looks, as well as personality). Using professional photos conveys neediness & a level of desperation hidden under a shell of an ego the shot tries to portray. So…
> To me, if you are a guy on a dating app and your pictures are not taken by a professional photographer then you are losing your time, and if you are paying you are also throwing your money. Don't do this. You need good pictures that convey attractiveness (looks, as well as personality). Using professional photos conveys neediness & a level of desperation hidden under a shell of an ego the shot tries to portray. So…
> Using professional photos conveys neediness & a level of desperation. Instinctively, I agree with you, but might this actually not be true anymore? I've noticed how "accepted" it is to share lots of selfies today, while before that used to be very obvious signs for self-absorbed/narcissistic/superficial/etc people, so I'm wondering if maybe we're both wrong thinking this today. Maybe like how selfies became part of…
- A mirror selfie of a man smiling
- A professional photo of the same man posing with a confident look (confidence is highly conflicted here imo)
Intuitively I don't think it's about norms vs general laws of attraction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> conveys neediness & a level of desperation In your experience, to what extent would displaying these qualities negatively impact a woman on a dating app?
If a woman is using professional shots? Or a male? Either way - For an attractive person: not much impact, though I think there is still a bit of a handicap depending on the type of person they are trying to attract and how much confidence plays into a valued trait for the other person. The same goes for how much of it seems ego-driven vs genuine. For the average person: I mean you're simply limiting your pool. And p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a woman is using professional shots? Or a male? Either way - For an attractive person: not much impact, though I think there is still a bit of a handicap depending on the type of person they are trying to attract and how much confidence plays into a valued trait for the other person. The same goes for how much of it seems ego-driven vs genuine. For the average person: I mean you're simply limiting your pool. And p…
Can't it communicate the opposite as well? You could read it as, I take this seriously so I will invest money into looking my best?
This is where I say your pool becomes limited. You need potential-matches who (1) not only seek "serious" partners, but (2) are emotionally more receptive to the photos. I would suggest the latter as actually adding more pressure vs receptiveness...
I think there is a paradox of "seriousness" converting to less success on apps - even with both sides having mutual interests. Declaring your seriousness sets a very early expectation FOR STRANGERS. When Im connecting with a woman who has "life partner only" on her profile... I feel pressured, regardless of attraction. Even when I (and literally 99% of the world) desire that type of human connection.
This is why natural occurrences in person are touted for.
This is why rising kink apps are seeing success as well as a bit of a revival with tinder (here is all of me, no expectations, if you like it - cool, lets see where it goes)
(1) I used to make those kind of non-informative scatter plots with xvgr when I was a grad student, this package does a great job for those kind of cases
https://seaborn.pydata.org/generated/seaborn.relplot.html
even if you don't use it you can copy its patterns to make designs that work
(2) An obvious commercial offering for guys is a photography package. About 20 years ago I went to the biggest photog in my town and my publisher paid $100 for a headshot that was just a junior photog in the studio. If you were a bride you would get premium hair and makeup to go with your photography, even if you were appearing on TV you would probably get a little hair and makeup help.
(3) With the right choice architecture you could control things such as "the percentage of people that you like" or "the number of likes that you receive". For instance if you were going just on looks it would be easy to show people a stack of 10 photos and have them sort them in attractiveness; you could also show pairs of profiles and pick an ELO for each one. If you look at it as a relative ranking process you can peel off whatever percentage off the top that you want.
An obvious objection is that given such a choice the "hot" people will be the only ones that get chosen but a counter to that is that you can put an upper limit on how many "likes" somebody gets by not showing them to people.
This contradicts some things he says later on about things that help the apps retain people, but from the viewpoint of making an app that "works", girls who are looking for commitment really aren't benefiting from seeing profiles from hot guys who get a lot of attention and provide nothing but casual sex.
For instance there are all these drops to near-zero in the histograms at .28, .46, .56 for no clear reason, and the article doesn't even consider that noteworthy.
The "Men Like ratio (y) vs ratio (x)" has an inexplicable wall around .33 which I could only explain with some sort of product limitation maybe? But I really wish it was explained what artifacts the product introduces.
> To me, if you are a guy on a dating app and your pictures are not taken by a professional photographer then you are losing your time, and if you are paying you are also throwing your money. Don't do this. You need good pictures that convey attractiveness (looks, as well as personality). Using professional photos conveys neediness & a level of desperation hidden under a shell of an ego the shot tries to portray. So…
A good professional photo won't look like a professional photo.
There's the "Sears" kind of photo where somebody unskilled works a camera installed in a studio which is not too expensive.
There's something a step up from that (maybe $100) where a pro photographer does the same thing.
I do environmental portraits, often with a 90mm or 135mm prime, sometimes with a wide zoom. Sometimes I discover places where I can get a great photograph of anybody in terms of lighting and background. It can be really special if you get a photo of somebody in an environment that's special to them but I don't think that's what you want for a dating site. But one of my generic environment shots would really be a winner, and I can shoot one in ten minutes inclusive of the walk to and from my office.
I'm not good at the people part of it. Some people photograph really well always (the alumni relations guy from my school, a disabled friend who might be high-functioning autistic) other people (me, my wife, my son) just don't. I can get a good photograph of somebody like that despite themselves but I have to try many sessions.
I've been doing sports photography seriously for about two years, lately I've come to see it as "people photography" and realized I do better if I think about it in terms of "getting pictures that make the players look great" as opposed to "following the ball". I am doing a volunteer gig that I'm treating as an audition for paying work and I'm planning to get a bunch of portraits out of it, so far as the technical stuff I went to the arena with my neurodivergent friend and used him as a stand-in. Now that I think about it I have two weeks to do something about the people side.
Dating apps are supposed to match people, but desire to match up is very lopsided towards one gender, with the other gender having very little desire to match up.
Having unrealistic expectations is one thing. Being the monkey paw that fulfills those wishes is on a wholly different level.
This is such a detailed article but it's giving me weird vibes. For instance there are all these drops to near-zero in the histograms at .28, .46, .56 for no clear reason, and the article doesn't even consider that noteworthy. The "Men Like ratio (y) vs ratio (x)" has an inexplicable wall around .33 which I could only explain with some sort of product limitation maybe? But I really wish it was explained what artifact…
Since it happens at the same place in each graph (eg a spike at 0.28-0.29, followed by a drop at 0.29-0.30) I wonder if it's some kind of number-theoretic effect from the fact it's actually a ratio of integers. For example, with less than 20 views there's no way to get to the 0.29-0.30 bucket, but 4 ways to get into the 0.28-0.29 bucket. Hmm.
Also notable that 0.56 is exactly twice 0.28.