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Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

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Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#51

Post by noduerme »

I went to a speed dating thing once that tried to incorporate its own (clearly homemade) tech stack into the experience. Every few minutes you'd get a text telling you who to find next... to look for the person in the red scarf or cowboy boots or something. By the time you found them and found somewhere to sit, you had a few minutes to talk.

It felt a bit unnecessary. In any case, maybe it was just how totally random in age and interest the people there were, but the result wasn't like cramming 15 online dates into the span of a single one. It was more like 15 conversations with people I would never have had the slightest impulse to contact via an online dating app. Most of the conversations had what felt like a comfortable mutual vibe of "we both understand we could not plausibly be attracted to each other." Then again, in online dating, I've come to realize that most guys incessantly swipe right, while I almost always swipe left.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#53

Post by ed »

johnfn wrote: post #31
ed wrote: post #4

I don’t think speed dating is as popular as submarine[1] articles suggest. But the constraint of being in-person and with a limited set of options may be helpful for some people. The paradox of choice is a significant issue on apps. I do agree that bandwidth is significantly higher in person, we’ve evolved efficient pattern detection, and wish it were more acceptable to meet up for a quick coffee immediately after ma…

Tangential from your point, but I don’t think this is a submarine article. This is just a single blogger. “Submarine article” typically refers to articles written by large news corporations (NYTimes eg) and incentivized by PR firms - none of which applies here. The reason I mention this is that “submarine article” is typically used to cast suspicion at the aims of the article. I can’t see any reason to do that to thi…

I was suggesting OP may have been influenced by submarine articles since the popularity of speed dating is a potentially unfounded premise of their argument. (Personally, I know very few folks who’ve done speed dating but of course that’s anecdotal.)

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#54

Post by vladms »

Gigachad wrote: post #47
johnfn wrote: post #38

Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps dont suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? (A sad fact is that dating will just suck for some % of the population. Is it possible that if there were no apps the same % would be saying how IRL dating sucks?) I know many people in stable LTRs or married who met through dating…

The fact is that younger generations are increasingly more single and finding it harder and harder to date. If dating apps are primarily to blame could be up for debate but something about the modern world is clearly not working.

I mean, we’re already six years past COVID—something that placed a heavy mental burden even on older generations. I can only imagine how much worse it was for younger people. I’d argue we’ll need another 20 years before most of the effects fade.

Even before then, I don’t think dating apps were the only issue—it was more the general lack of human interaction, with everything shifting online. Being in a relationship is nothing like just "chatting" or being "connected." I’m not complaining, but during my teenage and young adult years, I feel like I had less-than-ideal real-life experiences, which shaped my social skills and expectations. Talking to people in their 30s now, I get the sense they’re only experience this much later in life.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#55

Post by [deleted] »

feoren wrote: post #10
gassi wrote: post #2

I think the author missed an important factor: misaligned incentives. Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#56

Post by atmavatar »

Gigachad wrote: post #47
johnfn wrote: post #38

Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps dont suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? (A sad fact is that dating will just suck for some % of the population. Is it possible that if there were no apps the same % would be saying how IRL dating sucks?) I know many people in stable LTRs or married who met through dating…

The fact is that younger generations are increasingly more single and finding it harder and harder to date. If dating apps are primarily to blame could be up for debate but something about the modern world is clearly not working.

A big part is that it is now socially unacceptable to ask someone out at what were some of the places most likely to produce couples in the past.

For example, it used to be that something like 30-40% of relationships started in the workplace.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#57

Post by Bissness »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #36

Concerning "dating apps suck": OkCupid was decent in its heyday. But even at that time, there were very few users of it near the city where I lived or even in the country where I lived. Thus, it simply was nevertheless not useful to me. But no other dating site uses a similar algorithm; perhaps most people care about other things in dating than what OkCupid is optimized to give them.

That OkCupid was allowed to be sold to the Match Group was yet another massive antitrust failure

Founders selling out should also be viewed more critically than it currently is.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#58

Post by krackers »

lordnacho wrote: post #27

Everyone is playing the secretary problem. If you're popular, you have to turn down a lot of candidates before you try to find one that's in whatever you measure to be in your league (better than all the ones you saw previously, but I wonder how many people are really going with that). If you're on an app, that's a lot of people. At the same time, there's a bunch of people who aren't so popular who are now done check…

Maybe we need to spread the word about the optimal stopping rule [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#59

Post by cindyllm »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #42
jacob235 wrote: post #39

The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not for the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully curate every part of your first impression. This means that 1) you need to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you come off as the hottest, just that it's all green flags) because otherwise you are not putting your best foot forward, and 2) the dating profile is not reflective of the…

> The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not for the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully curate every part of your first impression. This means that 1) you need to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you come off as the hottest, just that it's all green flags) because otherwise you are not putting your best foot forward, and 2) the dating profile is not reflective of th…

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Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#60

Post by eszed »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #50
tbossanova wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need a few pictures to fill a profile. Taking a few snaps when doing interesting stuff likely spread over months or years isn’t “documenting every second of our lives”.

If I take a picture I’m not in it. If someone else takes a picture they don’t share it with me. How would I get pictures for a profile?

+Fifteen years ago, Facebook was amazing for this: everyone posted all the pictures they took at [event] and tagged everyone who was in them. But, you know... That wasn't as profitable as all the [everything else] they thought up, and they ruined the platform.

Practical suggestion: you can ask. Someone takes a picture with you in it, say "hey, you mind sending me that?" Like lots of social things it's not automatic (which, you know, Facebook was for a few years, and that was nice), and you have to "put yourself out there" a bit. Most people won't say 'no', and the thread with the photo is an opportunity for further interaction, if you want it to be.

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