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The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

jmtame.posthaven.com

241–250 of 258 posts

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#241
post #42
post #10

Wait, what? My friends might be setting up a profile for me without even knowing it? I sure hope that's qualified by "if I'm signed up", because otherwise I might need to engage in some rage.

They can already matchmake you without you knowing it offline; what's the difference if it's online? Presumably they wouldn't be allowed to use your real name or super-identifying photos or anything, so this "dating persona" they set up from you is divorced from the rest of your identity, and nobody will find it by looking for you.

> ... what's the difference if it's online?

The difference is that if it's not online, then it's purely interpersonal; a social, private, ephemeral (as in not recorded) sort of activity. But if it's online it's like publishing something in public; it's broadcast to a large number of strangers and it's recorded for a long time. Big difference, I would say.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a sexist comment because it is. The reality is that in a place like New York educated women move to the city for their careers. So do men, however when men get married and have children they tend to continue to work, whereas it's more common for women to leave the workforce. Hence, the percentage of the men in the city that go home to their family in Connecticut (or Westchester, or whatever) is much hi…

I'm not sure I understand your logic. Let's say 100 men and 100 women move to the Big Apple for their careers. Now let's say 50 of the men and 50 of the women hook up, get married, and move to Scarsdale. Let's say all of the women who have moved to Scarsdale buy a minivan and give up their jobs. Now, during the day, we have 100 men in the city and 50 women, giving a 2:1 ratio of men to women, but there are still 50 s…

You're forgetting the job vacancies that are filled when the married women leave the workforce.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just an extension of the "big city" effect. In general, attractive women gravitate toward big cities seeking successful men. I know that sounds sexist, but it really is a thing and it skews demographics. There are more dating women in NYC competing for fewer men. The situation in Nome, Alaska is reversed.

It sounds like a sexist comment because it is. The reality is that in a place like New York educated women move to the city for their careers. So do men, however when men get married and have children they tend to continue to work, whereas it's more common for women to leave the workforce. Hence, the percentage of the men in the city that go home to their family in Connecticut (or Westchester, or whatever) is much hi…

I see it as a sexist comment if you're incredibly sensitive to any claim that men or women might have trivial motivations. It's unfortunate, but stereotypes don't just come into existence with precedent.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your logic. Let's say 100 men and 100 women move to the Big Apple for their careers. Now let's say 50 of the men and 50 of the women hook up, get married, and move to Scarsdale. Let's say all of the women who have moved to Scarsdale buy a minivan and give up their jobs. Now, during the day, we have 100 men in the city and 50 women, giving a 2:1 ratio of men to women, but there are still 50 s…

You're forgetting the job vacancies that are filled when the married women leave the workforce.

And these job vacancies are gender-specific? If the 50 job vacancies must then be filled by 50 single women, then yes we now have a lot more single women in the Big Apple. If they can be filled by 25 single women and 25 single men, then the single men:women ratio is still 1:1.

I guess I might buy the argument that the vacant jobs might go to 30 women and 20 men, which would back up your point.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a sexist comment because it is. The reality is that in a place like New York educated women move to the city for their careers. So do men, however when men get married and have children they tend to continue to work, whereas it's more common for women to leave the workforce. Hence, the percentage of the men in the city that go home to their family in Connecticut (or Westchester, or whatever) is much hi…

I see it as a sexist comment if you're incredibly sensitive to any claim that men or women might have trivial motivations. It's unfortunate, but stereotypes don't just come into existence with precedent.

No, it's sexist if it's presuming that more women than men have trivial motivations or that those have more influence among women than men. Particularly when there are other, far less condescending and far more likely reasons for the gender skew in NYC.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#246
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…

The message pattern you describe sounds a lot like "the one-line hook"[1], and yes, it's very effective.

[1]http://onlinedatingmatchmaker.com/match-messages/

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#247
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…

As much as I agree with what you pointed out, it still doesn't address the attrition rate that occurs mostly for women that I pointed out below. Take any account and look any inbox over time and the attrition rate becomes obvious. If you look at my inbox on OkC, and you go to the last page of messages (about ~2 years ago) and most of the avatars next to the message are the default avatar, which usually indicates that the accounted is deleted or turned off. If you look at the account of a heterosexual woman that has been on OkC as long and look at a page of messages that are equivalently old, you'll see that most messages have a photograph avatar next to the messages.

It may be fundamentally unfixable, but it doesn't mean that the ratio of hetero women to hetero men can't be far more equal than it is now.

Message exchanging liquidity can also be improved, possibly via the methods I outlined below.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#248
post #97
post #14

I think this may be solving a legitimate problem, but I think you are incorrect that the source of the problem is hollywood. Online dating follows historically from personals classifieds. Personals ads contained very little information (in part because they had to be so short). This meant you were going on a date with someone you knew nothing about. It was worse than just a blind date... because you didn't even have…

If anything, it helps to have a link-bait title. You read it, didn't you?

Upon seeing the title I was expecting an article about movie piracy. I think this was ultimately more interesting.

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#249
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of adapting xkcd's robot9000 to dating sites on the other day. Instead of searching duplicate messages from 1 user, you search for duplicates across the entire database, with exponentially increasing ban periods if your message is not original. It would definitely force men and women to write meaningful messages.

I guess I will have to introduce random spelling errors into my messages then.

Spam filters can already detect this. :) Sorry!

Re: The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell

#250
post #162

You're completely right, people are lazy, but online dating is also way more work than it has to be. Women receive so many messages that it becomes overwhelming and too much work and men try sending earnest messages for a little while and then concede that it's basically a numbers game. These two phenomena are self-reinforcing. The more messages women receive, the less likely they are to respond. The more messages a…

Wow. I'm going to e-mail you this weekend. You've really thought about this stuff, and I think you've got some great ideas. Would love to chat with you some more.

No problem. If I don't reply immediately, just ping me again. Emails tend to get lost when I'm overwhelmed.
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