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What really happens inside a dating app

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Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like dying of thirst in lake Baikal, if the analogy meant abundance of choice. Desert and ocean both contain no drinkable water.

the implication is that they have a lot of water but it's unpalatable or toxic most of the time and needs filtering I think - easy matches but most of them bad?

Most men are insane from frustration, not unpalatable or toxic.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#52

I'm not going to go into details as I don't want to create a throwaway account for HN, but I can attribute a lot of people's feelings in dating apps to a few things. I got an email from Bumble a few years ago that said I was in the top x percent of people swiped on. If you try to brute force stats your way to dating apps, you will fail.... to some extent. A lot of this comes down to looks that you can control, and lo…

6 out of 10 male here (on looks), if that. Got about 300 matches, because I understand social systems and have a hacker mindset. Ultimately, met my wife after 30 dates. Didn't expect that. > Throwing money at apps works. I'm not going to go into details because my opinion is not based on anything other than my opinion, but I found that the more I spent on the apps, the more dates I would get. I've experienced that to…

> Got about 300 matches

Number of people I'm interested * Number of people who respond

(1 / 60) * (1 / 60) = 3600 people to get one match.

Times 300 = 1.08 million profiles I'd have to view.

Maybe you like 1 of 6? (is it that high, for most people I don' think so). And you manage to get a response from 1 of 10 (because I'd expect the other side to also be at best 1 of 6 + less likely to respond)

So, that's basically saying you went through a minimum of 18k profiles to get your 300 matches.

Did you get 300 matches or is that just a statement that you did well and the numbers aren't actual numbers?

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#53
post #40
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugly by most standards is simply not being desired by anyone. You don't have to be an acid victim like two-face to be ugly. I'd say someone is definitely ugly if you swipe on a few hundred average looking people and get zero matches back. That's ugly.

> if you swipe on a few hundred average looking people and get zero matches back. That's ugly. What's ugly is using an anemometer to measure a distance. I mean, using number of matches in a dating app, to measure uglyness. Dating apps are products designed by psychologist and built by engineers to generate frustration and make people pay, not to serve as a measurement stick of the average person's attractiveness. Dat…

Do you think if a non-profit open source dating app existed, with a sizable userbase, results would be different for the average guy?

People are quick to blame the greedy for profit business model, and I'm sure that has something to do with it, but with women swiping left on 95% of profiles (according to the article) it's hard to imagine designing a dating app that changes the math meaningfully. No matter the business model, you're not likely to turn that 95% into 75% or 50%.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#54

What I hate about Tinder is that it has become the only way to find woman for sex and for relationship, even if with miserable probabilities. Even in my tiny non English speaking country. The man has to pay for the app. Women ending up on Tinder loathe how despicable the app is ("looking for a pearl in this cesspool", "don't believe I ended up here" etc.) while somehow don't notice that they make this place this way.

While men having to pay is potentially no fun, I think it is definitely men that “make this place this way”. Men act entitled to whatever woman they find attractive. They accordingly act aggressively, don’t respect boundaries both on and offline, and frequently lie about themselves and their intentions to get the girl. Men should take a note from women and be more picky before they pursue (and stop when told no).

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#55
post #22

> More than 50% of men just never receive a like, and never means maybe 2 or 3 likes in the lifespan of several weeks As someone in that more than 50%, it’s very annoying to constantly get told to get on the apps to meet women. I’m surrounded by men in the top 20% because I’m affluent, well educated, and spend a lot of time at the gym. Sadly, I’m just around these people and wasn’t born into the same kind of family.…

Find a poor girl. You are probably going for the ones with a ton of options. Get out of your bubble.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#56
post #2

> To me, if you are a guy on a dating app and your pictures are not taken by a professional photographer then you are losing your time, and if you are paying you are also throwing your money. Don't do this. You need good pictures that convey attractiveness (looks, as well as personality). Using professional photos conveys neediness & a level of desperation hidden under a shell of an ego the shot tries to portray. So…

I optimized heavily on good photos. It worked for me, YMMV.

This is the correct answer. Only do dating apps as a way to do A/B testing. ;)

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#57
post #40
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugly by most standards is simply not being desired by anyone. You don't have to be an acid victim like two-face to be ugly. I'd say someone is definitely ugly if you swipe on a few hundred average looking people and get zero matches back. That's ugly.

> if you swipe on a few hundred average looking people and get zero matches back. That's ugly. What's ugly is using an anemometer to measure a distance. I mean, using number of matches in a dating app, to measure uglyness. Dating apps are products designed by psychologist and built by engineers to generate frustration and make people pay, not to serve as a measurement stick of the average person's attractiveness. Dat…

Let’s say that you meet a few hundred average women in real life and none express physical attraction to you. I’d say you’re still ugly.

Meeting single women in real life through acquaintances is pretty uncommon. Most of the women I meet through friends aren’t single. For good reason, most men burn their bridges with eligible women and most women have no interest in showing you to their friends.

The only person who ever introduced me to any women was a very kind gay man and it was abnormal even for him. He really reached for me but both women rejected on the spot due to their lack of physical attraction.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#58
post #22

> More than 50% of men just never receive a like, and never means maybe 2 or 3 likes in the lifespan of several weeks As someone in that more than 50%, it’s very annoying to constantly get told to get on the apps to meet women. I’m surrounded by men in the top 20% because I’m affluent, well educated, and spend a lot of time at the gym. Sadly, I’m just around these people and wasn’t born into the same kind of family.…

Find a poor girl. You are probably going for the ones with a ton of options. Get out of your bubble.

I’m not interested in charity or exploitation.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#59
My anecdotal user-end data-science-ish story about dating apps:

A few years back I was single and on Hinge a fair amount. If you used Hinge back then, you'll remember some key differences between the platform and other dating apps: 1) when you "like"'d someone, you'd have to comment on a specific part of their profile (a photo, a prompt answer, etc), 2) these likes showed up in their inbox, independent of whether they liked you or not (as in, you didn't have to like each other mutually; the other end decided whether to reply or ignore after delivery), and 3) there was limit per day, you could like/message 8 profiles per day, no more. On average, swiping through my 8 per day, I'd generally get 1-2 new replies, which turned roughly into 3-4 first dates per month.

One of the key elements is that the inbox was time-ordered: the most recent like you received was at the top. There was discussion on the Hinge subreddit about how girls would typically only click through the top few items in their inbox daily, and if you were lower down, you were doomed to drown under the mountain of new message they're getting on top. So I figured I'd solve for "what is the optimal time of day to be blasting out my likes to ensure I end up higher in the inbox?"

You can probably see where this is going: I requested a GDPR data export, which happened to have all my conversations, time-stamped. Crunching through in Python there was something in the data I didn't really expect.. a disproportionate number of first-replies (replies to my initial like/message, that is) were around the 2-3pm bucket. Not what I would've expected (don't these people work?) but fair enough, I started doing all my swiping in those hours instead of in the evening as I usually did.

And it worked. Good god did it work. I consistently started getting replies to 70-80% of my initial messages (from the ~10% before). I was drowning in conversations to the point where I wouldn't swipe at all for days for fear of yet another conversation to manage. Within a few months I ended up meeting my current girlfriend and haven't been back on since, but it was surprising how well something simple like time-of-day affected my reply rate.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the implication is that they have a lot of water but it's unpalatable or toxic most of the time and needs filtering I think - easy matches but most of them bad?

Most men are insane from frustration, not unpalatable or toxic.

People generally do not want to have an insane, frustrated partner.
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