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Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

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31–40 of 90 posts

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#31
It is a numbers game and the problem with dining is that you can only make one try per night.

Try the old school method: take ballroom dancing classes.

Ballroom dancing is not only funny, it is a very clever algorithm to select a long term partner, and one of the best features is that you can try 40 partners per night.

I used to be that guy that sits in the corner drinking all night: "dancing is not for me". Can't believe how much time I wasted.

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#32
post #12

As a single late 40-something, I found myself chuckling in agreement with all the main points of this really well written article. The online dating process, to me at least, falls somewhere between setting myself on fire with lighter fluid and posting cat vids (well, anything really) on Facebook. I tried it a few years back and very quickly realized it just wasn't for me and didn't fit my personality worth a damn. It…

> every women I did meet online immediately ran background checks Are you serious? Women actually run background checks on dates? I don't know where to begin with my questions. Did you tell the women about your background, or they just do it on everyone? What company or service does these checks? Don't they have to get authorization from you to do a check? Wouldn't this be expensive? Is this something typical in the…

It doesn't seem too outlandish to me. Date rape is a thing that happens with depressing frequency. Women have to be constantly alert, and if something happens to them everyone will tell them that they deserved it or did something to bring it on. In that sort of an environment, you'd damn well better expect background checks.

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#33

Ask HN: Who is single?

I... don't see HN as being a decent dating service. My guess is that the demographics align to the average engineering / CS program, which does not bode well for the vast majority of people trying to get a date.

Of course, for the women among us, the Georgia Tech mantra applies - the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

(Currently taken, with a girlfriend who says "Yes dear" when I start talking about anything computer-related. I sometimes wonder if the reason that our relationship endures is that I'm good at killing spiders)

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#34
post #19
post #8

I wonder if it's just me or does the complaint concerns mostly oc cupid, which is very data obsessed. For example Tinder, a far more successful online dating tool seems to be much much simpler in purpose and not suffering from those problems. In other words - I think it's specific to data obsessed nerds take on online dating and not the problem with online dating at all :-)

I think Tinder nailed the concept that many people don't want/have time to write 10,000 words about themselves or answer stupid quizzes. At least in my experience, a lengthy profile isn't going to help you; it can only hurt, and the item of largest importance (as the article states) is the pictures. Tinder seems ideal to quickly move from 'swipe', to a couple text messages, to a date. It's the first date that really…

Yeah. Tinder was willing to acknowledge and work with the fact that in seeking out new partners, the first thing that people notice and care about is physical appearance/attractiveness. If you can't get past that, there's little chance of anything happening no matter how awesome the other person might be in all other aspects.

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#35
What triggers a flash of actual nostalgia is a memory of the days when you met someone in the real world, perhaps at an activity that both of you enjoy, perhaps someone who wasn’t even supposed to be your type. That person might have caught your fancy, and the first order of business was to figure out whether he or she was, like you, unattached.

Honestly people, you can still do this. Nothing's stopping you.

You know what my best "dating site" has actually been? Facebook events. Whether it's something public, a meetup, or friends' parties and the like, I meet people who know people and sometimes those people are attractive and then I ask them if they want to go out sometime.

I have gotten more dates that way in the last 6 months than I have in the entire history of using online dating websites. The whole experience, even in its' ideal, is so utterly artificial, compared to just meeting someone in person. I am on the verge of just dismissing the concept as a sham. They seem to exist mostly as an outlet for desperate men to harass women in bulk volume.

I still glance at Tinder occasionally, and I have an OKC subscription I keep forgetting to cancel, but in the former case it's become little more than a mobile version of "Hot or Not" to play when I am bored (the rare response is almost always spam), and in the latter it's more of a "well, if I hit a lull, maybe ..." sort of a thing.

I'd much rather just meet actual humans face to face and give us both a chance to see what we're really like in person. That's where a natural connection is going to come from anyway.

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#37
post #8

I wonder if it's just me or does the complaint concerns mostly oc cupid, which is very data obsessed. For example Tinder, a far more successful online dating tool seems to be much much simpler in purpose and not suffering from those problems. In other words - I think it's specific to data obsessed nerds take on online dating and not the problem with online dating at all :-)

I don't think Tinder is very effective. Most guys swipe right on everyone, meaning girls make the first choice, then guys select from those that they mutually matched with, to start a conversation. That's the summary.

Still, it's like the first iteration of the Stable Marriage algorithm :)

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#38

One question asks how we’d feel about being slapped hard in the face during sex — and the possible answers include “horrified,” “aroused,” and . . . . . “nostalgic.” More than I want to meet the woman of my dreams, I want to meet the employee who came up with that last option. This quote is a keeper.

I seem to recall that most of the questions are user submitted.

I don't know about most, but many are; you earn the right to create questions after having answered enough yourself.

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#39

One question asks how we’d feel about being slapped hard in the face during sex — and the possible answers include “horrified,” “aroused,” and . . . . . “nostalgic.” More than I want to meet the woman of my dreams, I want to meet the employee who came up with that last option. This quote is a keeper.

You'd figure for such a long piece he'd at least have an understanding of this widely-publicized feature of okcupid, which is that questions and answers are crowdsourced from the users. Sheesh!

Re: Clicking for Love – The Curious, Odious, Hilarious World of Online Dating

#40
post #27

Having just been back in the scene this past week, this is disturbingly accurate. I'm 41. I'm surprised by the number of women that are still on the site from the last time I went through this 5 years ago. I have a large profile, with a ton of hooks for conversation, and yet the number of girls I talk to on there either don't want to or can't be bothered to ask a question. And unfortunately, the one that does, I have…

Might I suggest the possibility that you yourself have become as unattractive to the 40-year-old women as they have become to you?
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