Never pay for online dating (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#151

Post by kashunstva » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

Cloudef wrote: post #101

romankolpak wrote: post #82

Related personal anecdote: I am experimenting with Tinder subscription at the moment, and it feels incredibly exploitative. When you make a profile, matches are frequent and you can tell that you show up for people. However it gradually falls down with time, and the only predictable and obvious way to get back up is to pay for Boosts and/or Priority Likes. Right now my 6-month old profile gets ZERO likes outside of t…

Quoted post unavailable.

> meet people in real life like you are meant to be.

Meant by whom - you? The form of this argument could be extended in any number of equally ludicrous directions where things were previously one way and now they are another, e.g. “Forget airplanes, walk like you are meant to.”

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#152

Post by Cloudef » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #141

Cloudef wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you. Doesnt change the fact they are shady and made to mainly exploit people's weakness for money.

> exploit people's weakness for money Weakness?

Loneliness

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#153

Post by kikokikokiko » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #74

houstonn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More Orwellian still, they edited articles that contained data inconvenient to the politically correct narrative and elite ideology. Edit: Here's an example. “I’m bisexual.” REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender. People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect. https://web.archive.org/web/20170307114207/h…

Whats inconvinient to the pollitically correct narrative is people with 0 scientific literacy making bold claims about society based on surveys on extremely sampled social studies. Doing a study on how "dateable" black women are based on a specific dating app in 2010 is like making claims on everyones eating habits based on a survey on a Burger king drive through. It will probably not be a very good survey. They also…

Far from your Burger King straw men, there's even a very famous study, out of the UK if I'm not mistaken, that confirmed the thesis of black women being the least attractive group across the whole spectrum of major ethnic groups. I mean, there must be one group, out of all, that would score lower than the others ain't there? Reality doesn't have to be politically correct at the end of the day.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#154

Post by karpierz » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #53

idealmedtech wrote: post #15

The problem really happens when you do algorithmic price setting, which incentivizes you as the developer to get people addicted to the experience of swiping, regardless of whether or not the swiping has the desired outcome for the end user. A user base with just the right levels of dopamine from interactions and loneliness will probably end up buying one of the weekly promotional deals. That's why when you first sta…

The problem is worse than that... The app/site developers interests are directly opposing the users interests. The user (perhaps) wants to find a lifelong partner, and never use dating apps again. The site developer wants users to never find a lifelong partner, and to spend months/years returning to the app to find new candidates. In my experience, the developer usually wins - some users on dating sites have been the…

This model ignores a key incentive: dating apps that don't successfully match won't be used.

So at best, the developer is incentivized to have the user find someone to date in the short term and have the relationship fail in a manner that doesn't reflect poorly on the dating site. And it's not really feasible for the dating site distinguish between "will successfully date for a few months" and "will successfully date for a lifetime".

You could apply the same logic to any long term purchase. Dealerships only sell lemons because they want you to come back and buy more cars. Recruiters only match you with companies that you'll definitely want to leave because they want to match you again. Realtors only show you houses you'll hate because then you'll want to move again.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#155

Post by denton-scratch » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

Cloudef wrote: post #116

Carrok wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> meet people in real life like you are meant to be Keep this gatekeeping nonsense to yourself. I met my wife of many years on a dating app. We probably never would have met by chance.

Good for you. Doesnt change the fact they are shady and made to mainly exploit people's weakness for money.

How is wanting to meet a partner "weakness"?

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#156

Post by kikokikokiko » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #135

afpx wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be ok if they warned that it's just for entertainment? I enjoy reading these types of articles, and in my next project, I was planning to do something similar.

> Would it be ok if they warned that it's just for entertainment? I mean they were always ok, but the problem is presenting some silly fun data analysis as "science". If you counted how many people have red hats in your way to work and publish it as a blog it can be fun. If suddenly far right groups start making posts about how your red hat stats correlate with immigration and theft statistics then your post is not t…

"presenting some silly fun data analysis as "science""

Their silly data analysis had a sample that was probably orders of magnitude larger than any cohort an university paper could dream of getting their hands on, but yeah, it was just a silly fun data analysis.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#157

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

535188B17C93743 wrote: post #78

EmilyHughes wrote: post #62

I don't get it. Why does no government anywhere run a non-profit dating site from tax-payer money when this is becoming the most popular way people are meeting? All the options people have are using toxic apps which entire business model is to undermine the self-esteem of young men and scamming them out of their money. And then people wonder where the mental health problems and mass shootings come from. I really don'…

Seems like a waste of tax-payer money to me. Why can't people just... meet others offline like they did 10+ years ago.

People can meet each other offline like they did 10+ years ago. They (or some large proportion) might prefer to meet online though, as the evidence seems to indicate.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#158

Post by globular-toast » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

bschne wrote: post #58

Aside: I'm in my late twenties and have used various of the currently popular dating apps on/off over the last few years. Whenever I see one of the old OKC blogposts around the internet, it's kind of striking how different the pictures look from what you'd see on the apps today. It's possible/not unlikely I'm overinterpreting based on the different style/fashion alone here, but it just all seems a lot less posed & st…

Probably because online dating/apps are mainstream now. OkCupid was most certainly not mainstream. Online dating still had a social stigma even in 2010 and OkCupid was the one that geeks used. It was generally full of unattractive people. Some people now intentionally take and curate pictures for their online profile and even some of the most attractive people use it.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#159

Post by dheera » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

idealmedtech wrote: post #15

The problem really happens when you do algorithmic price setting, which incentivizes you as the developer to get people addicted to the experience of swiping, regardless of whether or not the swiping has the desired outcome for the end user. A user base with just the right levels of dopamine from interactions and loneliness will probably end up buying one of the weekly promotional deals. That's why when you first sta…

Honestly, I wouldn't mind paying $10K for finding someone who actually becomes my life partner, let's say due upon 2 years of stable marriage. In such a system, user incentives would be fully aligned with the business. However -- this would be hard to enforce.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#160

Post by hahamrfunnyguy » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

romankolpak wrote: post #82

Related personal anecdote: I am experimenting with Tinder subscription at the moment, and it feels incredibly exploitative. When you make a profile, matches are frequent and you can tell that you show up for people. However it gradually falls down with time, and the only predictable and obvious way to get back up is to pay for Boosts and/or Priority Likes. Right now my 6-month old profile gets ZERO likes outside of t…

I am sure that is the case, their goal is to keep you swiping as much as possible and buying their upgrades. I had a Gold membership for about a year or so. Boosts didn't work for me, I found that the boots only yielded a lot of low-quality likes (ie: profiles, that my filters should have rejected). I also continuously had profiles showing up that didn't meet my filter criteria and that I'd already swiped left on just days before.

I ended up emailing support and making the case that the site wasn't working as advertised or even as support said it was supposed to be working. I ended up getting a full refund.