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The dating app paradox

npr.org

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Re: The dating app paradox

#441

Post by tareqak »

safety1st wrote: post #362
not2b wrote: post #103

The fact that one company repeatedly bought out its competition and now owns, according the the article, 45 dating apps probably has a lot to do with why they suck. Instead of competing by trying to be better, just buy out the rivals, gut them, and make everything worse. As long as the dominant player has lots of capital to buy any upstarts and the regulatory environment lets them do it, it can be an easier way to ma…

Yeah, to NPR's credit they do touch on this, but I think this is yet another facet of American life and business where the answer is the same, and simple. There is a monopoly in this sector of the economy and the monopolist's profit incentives are opposed to human life. In particular this monopoly stands to make the most money by lying and claiming to facilitate the creation of relationships, while in actuality not d…

I honestly think there are many such situations today, and they should be identified so that those who have qualms can avoid those sorts of industries and businesses in the same way people avoid allergens, addictions, and other harmful substances and activities.

People need to look beyond responsibilities to a company’s shareholders and look at responsibilities towards the shareholders of their communities and societies: their fellow human beings.

Re: The dating app paradox

#442

Post by throwaway290 »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #430
throwaway290 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Body type is a significant factor for way more than 50%. People lie on surveys because they feel guilty for being superficial. I think you are extrapolating your own view. You have no way of knowing what they feel and even for an educated guess you do not know which country/social class/occupation those users tend to be from in the app being discussed.

Revealed preferences are a thing, no matter the social class. What people self-report to want and what they actually want is rarely the same, especially in fields with high social pressure.

Of course but you can't just claim that because you feel like X then everyone feels like X even if they say Y. You gotta have something to back it up. Especially if you represent a minority of users in many categories...

Re: The dating app paradox

#443

Post by fennecbutt »

Well yeah, if the app works then they don't get any money anymore. And they've gotten crazy expensive too.

I find it quite frustrating because I've tried to use these apps to find people similar to myself, but it's just impossible. Now they're all going to a "slim" approach where you don't even get to have a profile, just witty quotes and pics, no likes/dislikes etc. They're clearly designed for the superficial class of people/not to find you a relationship.

It's irritating as a gay furry who's not a heyyy type gay that I get a wall of tanned abs that only want to endlessly talk about Ru Paul's drag race, travelling and well...that's it.

I mean damn I like travelling too, it's why I moved to Europe, but these apps would work a hell of a lot better if you can provide as much data about your interests, likes/dislikes etc as you can and have the machine match up with similar + slightly similar.

Bumble is especially bad, at least gay guys don't grt their stupid "women talk first" behaviour, but we do get their idiotic design of having no real profile, just pics + "funi quote" and that's it.

The market is so ready for someone to come in with something that actually works and refuses to sell out. Whoever does that would make a mint (as long as they have the willpower to stick to it/not be bought).

Re: The dating app paradox

#445

Post by waqf »

monero-xmr wrote: post #306
maxlamb wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve dated for years without apps trying to meet people organically, and then also years through dating apps, and I’ve had way more opportunities for human contact with dating apps. I mean the whole point of dating apps is to meet in person once you feel the person might be a good match

The benefit of dating apps IMO is that everyone on there is explicitly there to find a partner for some reason. In real life it’s a bit of a guessing game, which is fine, but the simple math is that love is easier to find where all the people looking for love are hanging out.

My experience is that the major limiting factor in finding partners is whether people "click" with me, not whether people are single.

In other words I'm better off going to an event with my kind of people and looking for the 5% that are eligible singles, than going to an event with singles and looking for the 0.5% that are my kind of people.

Obviously this would be different if you're a person who likes almost everyone and is attractive to almost everyone — a golden retriever, as it were. I offer no opinion on whether many such people exist.

Re: The dating app paradox

#446

Post by _heimdall »

Spooky23 wrote: post #372
Retric wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US conservatives have nothing to do with maintaining or returning to historic norms. From massive government subsidies and radical tax policies to wild spending sprees they’ve completely abandoned past stances only keeping the name. Similarly modern democratic politicians have no real connection to the glass of water theory and similar stances. Voters on each side are extremely diverse to the point there’s little uni…

They are authoritarian, not conservative. The family values crap is just bread and circus for the religious zealots.

Both parties in the US are fairly authoritarian. They've dine an excellent job at riling up the public into picking sides while the parties themselves sure seem to be one and the same.

Sure they get into public debates and throw political mud at each other, but at the end of the day they agree on direction and end up only debating details.

For example, both parties want to shut down the southern border and only debate how to do it. Both parties want larger government with more regulations, they just occasionally debate which regulations to add. Both want to spend like there's no tomorrow, debating only who to give the newly printed money/debt to. They both agree that banks and many large corps are too big to fail. They both continue to pull more power to the federal level, only pulling state-level stunts when its a political show. They both lean heavily on executive power when in charge, wielding more and more power from the Oval Office and circumventing congress.

The list goes on, but from where I sit we aren't offered the choice between a more liberal or conservative party, we're offered to pick one of two sides in a fight that is largely chummed with political hot topics that keep us all arguing with each other while the politicians largely do whatever they want.

Re: The dating app paradox

#447

Post by drooby »

alickz wrote: post #440
shiroiushi wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hasn't been my experience at all, and I definitely don't think I'm a 10/10. I've had absolutely no trouble getting dates. (This does not mean that all the dates were great, or led anywhere BTW; the vast majority were nice enough people but there was no interest on one side or the other.) When I see posts like this, I really wonder if men like you just don't know how to write a decent profile intro/bio and post s…

> When I see posts like this, I really wonder if men like you just don't know how to write a decent profile intro/bio and post some good photos. Do you ever wonder if your experiences are just not reflective of the majority? Could be they make all the right moves and still lose, it happens more than people are willing to admit I think

Ask your female friends to show you their tinder or hinge apps.

Take a look at what most men's profiles look like.

It is shocking, funny, and a little bit sad. At least it was for me. Maybe it's because I live in a big city? Idk.

Tons of mirror selfies, car selfies, low quality photos, weird forced smiles (no offense - smiles can be improved), red flag prompts, etc.

That's most profiles.. the next percentile is average looking guys with no "edge" to make them standout. Super cliche. Why should she swipe right in this guy? Yeah, he might be nice and safe. But he's exactly the same as the other 1000 guys that have this profile.

Re: The dating app paradox

#448

Post by _heimdall »

shiroiushi wrote: post #324
sapphicsnail wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservative doesn't necessarily == old. I'm a woman who loves other women, we've been around forever, but conservatives want to make it difficult for us to have relationships.

Conservative means old-fashioned, not old. More specifically, it means returning to some halcyon (usually mythical) "good old days" when things weren't "degenerate". Sure, homosexuals have been around forever, but societal acceptance of homosexual relationships is relatively new. Conservatives (in the US) want to turn the clock back on that, and make those relationships socially unacceptable or even illegal. Of cours…

The definition of conservative isn't nearly as black and white, especially in the US.

What is conservative, in the sense of wanting things not change, is a constant moving bar and requires more context. Conservative, in the sense of going back to something in the past, requires context of how far you want to go back.

> Of course, conservatives have certain ideas of when exactly the "good old days" were. Homosexuality was very accepted (even encouraged) in ancient Greece, for example, but Christian US conservatives obviously don't want to go back to those days.

This is a perfect example of the latter. Anyone in the US that considers removing protections for sexual identity must first pick a time in the past where the laws and norms fit their preferences. That can be called conservative, but is it really?

For the former, my generation's big push was to finally make gay marriage legal. It was progressive for sure, and classically liberal in the sense that we were trying to further protect individual rights and freedom to choose. Once it passed, though, does it become conservative? Personally I prefer the definition of conservative that is more present focused, preferring to leave things as they are today unless we have a very good reason to change it. In that sense, protecting gay marriage and similar protections on the books today would be very conservative and trying to remove them would fall into some other bucket that likely doesn't have a name (reductivist? destructionist?).

Re: The dating app paradox

#449

Post by poulpy123 »

thegrim33 wrote: post #155
not2b wrote: post #103

The fact that one company repeatedly bought out its competition and now owns, according the the article, 45 dating apps probably has a lot to do with why they suck. Instead of competing by trying to be better, just buy out the rivals, gut them, and make everything worse. As long as the dominant player has lots of capital to buy any upstarts and the regulatory environment lets them do it, it can be an easier way to ma…

In a free market, if such a company's products are crappy, as you propose, then that means there's an opportunity for anyone that wants to make profit to provide an app that isn't crappy; they'd get rewarded for it. The question shouldn't be "how do we stop this company", it should be, "why aren't people providing competing, non-crappy, apps?". Let's fix the root issue rather than proposing regulation to regulate a p…

The root issue is that the "free market" as you see it is a total myth

Re: The dating app paradox

#450

Post by _heimdall »

romwell wrote: post #227
skrbjc wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought for a while now that it is a matter of national interest that your population couples up and has children. It's immensely important for the success of a nation and it's odd that the majority of how people meet now is through data apps and that there is no oversight over these at all. They have every incentive to match you with someone you are more likely to have a short term relationship than match you w…

>I've thought for a while now that it is a matter of national interest that your population couples up and has children Yeah, and many people in the US would be way more eager to do that had we had: - affordable housing - minimum wage that allows a single parent to support themselves - universal healthcare - mandated paid (and then, unpaid) parental leave - free childcare - substancial financial assistance to new par…

That sounds very, very expensive. Assuming that the single parents that would most need the help here similarly can't afford the taxes to fund these programs, who is paying for and subsidizing it?

If its a massive shift towards corporate taxes, I could probably get behind that.

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