What really happens inside a dating app • Hacker News Board

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#291

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #262

satvikpendem wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you do to growth hack Tinder? Seems significantly harder than OkCupid as profiles aren't public and it's predicated on one-by-one swiping.

I'll talk about the things I'm willing to post publicly (feel free to email me for what I can only say in private). 1. Get the BEST possible pictures of you. If your picture doesn't look like the best picture you've taken all year, don't use it. Just know that online dating is more about being photogenic and looking good in the perceptions of others than actually looking good. However, if you're unattractive IRL, mak…

Thanks, those are all the pretty standard things I've read about as well, especially about optimizing photos. I had thought you did some advanced scraping and data analysis like the OkCupid guy above but regardless I'll email you.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#292

Post by volkk » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #286

4gotunameagain wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, thank you for sharing. I wonder what the relationship with girl's age is. I would imagine there are huge differences between let's say 20,25,30 and 35+. Did you happen to group by age bucket ?!

I did not, because I filter on pretty strict ranges ("half your age plus seven" was my lower bound, my age was the upper bound). Not enough of a spread there to get any interesting statistics.

> ("half your age plus seven" was my lower bound,

i remember reading about this rule of thumb but dang, i'm 35 and can't imagine dating someone that's 24-25 right now. no judgments here btw.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#293

Post by rqtwteye » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 3:25 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #264

rqtwteye wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cap was maybe 5. Seems I have less capacity.

To be fair, I was crazily driven and treated it like a job. Intimacy is crazy important to me Edit: interesting that I got at least 3 downvotes for that comment. I don't mind, genuinely. It's just interesting. Different world views and all that

People will downvote you for stating a truth they don’t like.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#294

Post by scarface_74 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 3:26 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #284

cultofmetatron wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Women in the west are choosing, quite reasonably, to hook up with the top 20% of men and ignore the rest. Ive been living abroad the past few years and it was night and day. in america, intimacy was a rare thing. outside the country, I've had zero issues finding partners who I find extremely attractive. Some of my well meaning friends back home warn me that they are "only interested in money" but I've never spent m…

This kind of advice only works if you’re not interested in a woman who works. You’re not going to be getting an ambitious woman from abroad and bringing her back to the US. Most of those women would already be in the US if they were interested in such a path to begin with.

Honestly, after you get a certain age, a lot of American women expect you not to need them to work.

So I was downstairs at my hangout spot at the bar where I’m good friends with the bartender. A group of us started talking and this 45 year old lady who was attractive, a lawyer, multiple paid off properties, with two small kids going through a divorce and she was saying if she gets serious about someone, it would have to be someone who could pay all of the bills so if she didn’t want to work, she didn’t have to.

But if she did work, her money was her money. She would use it to buy for her kids, help her family (aging parents mostly). Her husband shouldn’t expect “her” money to be used for household expenses. Funny enough, I have a cousin who is in her early 50s also a lawyer with her own practice, divorced with two grown children and a 14 year old who feels the same way.

She wants to be able to stop working. You would be surprised at the number of self sufficient American women who really don’t want to work.

For me personally, I’ve been married since I was 38 and my wife was 36 and we agreed for her to stop working when I was 46 and she was 44.

First I didn’t want her working during Covid in 2020 and then after Covid we started traveling a lot including a year of doing the “digital nomad” thing flying one way across the country. I had just gotten a job that was paying 7x more than she was making.

She has her hobby/passion projects that bring in a little money. But that’s about it.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#295

Post by rqtwteye » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #254

marinmania wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory for the swiping behavior of women. When they swipe right, it will most likely be a match, and they mentally don't want more than X active conversations at a time. This strikes me as rational and reasonable. For men, most swipes will not be a match, so less reason to ever think about swiping left to maintain a certain swipe pecentage. Just a theory!

Women complain about the poor quality of conversations they encounter We should do a study on that itself, because I think guys are having quality conversations, pulling teeth with an entitled beautiful woman they are prioritizing, and everyone else is waiting for the guy to lead and there is no bandwidth left! so guys spread themselves too thin to procedurally lead every new conversation after accumulating matches w…

“ Women complain about the poor quality of conversations they encounter”

From my experience in online dating there are a lot of women who expect the guy to do everything. He needs to approach and then also carry the conversation. Out of maybe 10 initial messages I received from women there was maybe 1 that was more than “Hi”.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#296

Post by torben-friis » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 3:32 PM UTC

jazz9k wrote: post #281

torben-friis wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The past you mention was awful for women, because social dynamics meant their profiles were being hit with a constant DDOS. That in turn made demographics very skewed, which made the problem worse. In fact I'd say being able to balance this gender imbalance is THE issue to solve for modern apps. Everything including monetization models is built around that.

"The past you mention was awful for women, because social dynamics meant their profiles were being hit with a constant DDOS." Many women I know loved the attention and having the ability to choose.

Have you seen a woman using tinder? They absolutely have the ability to choose, almost every right swipe will be a match. Now they just have to give an ok before the pm notifications reaches them.

The current model is clearly preferred as tinder made dating apps mainstream.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#297

Post by knighthack » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 3:48 PM UTC

wutwutwat wrote: post #275

knighthack wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Congratulations on your shaming ad-hominem language. Your lack of any genuine counterpoint reveals your men-hating nature by your remarks, which deserve no further response.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#298

Post by wutwutwat » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

knighthack wrote: post #297

wutwutwat wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Congratulations on your shaming ad-hominem language. Your lack of any genuine counterpoint reveals your men-hating nature by your remarks, which deserve no further response.

Me calling out you for your distorted view of women === I hate men?

Solid logic. 100%. Probably the same logic that resulted in your wack determination about rejection.

PS. I'm a man. One who doesn't hate women. Or men. Not in general. I am able to hate individuals though, and their gender plays little into it, while their sweeping generalizations and hateful pseudo facts often do.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#299

Post by naijaboiler » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #201

eloisius wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And those men are also going to match with 95th percentile women and then choose them over the 60th percentile women anyway unless they're only looking for a hookup That’s exactly what happens. Those guys have plenty of hookup opportunities, and the women have the mirage of being able to get any guy, just for some reason all these jerks only want sex, but somehow someday one will stick

Which is why you need to take away the mirage so they stop chasing it and go find actual water. Having them leave the app isn't any worse than having them never like anyone they could actually land. Having the ones with impossible standards go malign your competitors could even be to your advantage, because then the competing apps get a higher proportion of the women who never reply, whereas the thing you need to mak…

if women left the app, guys would leave. possibility of connecting with women is what's being sold to paying customers on dating apps. Without ladies, the men leaves and the app dies.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#300

Post by bradlys » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #294

bradlys wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of advice only works if you’re not interested in a woman who works. You’re not going to be getting an ambitious woman from abroad and bringing her back to the US. Most of those women would already be in the US if they were interested in such a path to begin with.

Honestly, after you get a certain age, a lot of American women expect you not to need them to work. So I was downstairs at my hangout spot at the bar where I’m good friends with the bartender. A group of us started talking and this 45 year old lady who was attractive, a lawyer, multiple paid off properties, with two small kids going through a divorce and she was saying if she gets serious about someone, it would have…

As far as I know, you're also not spending $3m+ on a home. Even at $700k/yr income, I still need another income to afford a decent bay area home unless I want to live on the absolute razors edge. It also means that if I lose my work, we're completely fucked and I better find another job very fast. That $20k/month you gotta pay for the home ain't gonna disappear on its own.

I too could live in a world of not needing a wife with any income if I chose to live in BFE or moved to Thailand. However, I want to raise my kids in a decent community with ample opportunities and be in a region where I have a good amount of career options rather than being tied into the singular (low-pay) employer that exists within the region or be stuck in remote-hell.