Worst Online Dater

Dating apps are a world of abundance, a buffet of sausages for women. For men they are a pit of hell, unless you're either (1) in the top 10% (2) have low standards.

Here are some Tinder stats [1]

- a man of average attractiveness is “liked” by approximately 0.87% (1 in 115) of women on Tinder. - the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.

Anecdotally I have never had anything remotely resembling "success" on a dating app. I almost never get matches, my messages almost never get replies, and even when I get to the point of scheduling a date, they virtually always drop off. And then even when they agree to a date, they often cancel on the day of, and on multiple occasions even block me.

In real life meeting women in person, I've ever had any issues with dating.

It annoys me that people speak of "dating apps" collectively without addressing the enormous discrepancy between the male and female experience on them. It's analogous to speaking about the pros and cons of something like monarchy without considering that your experience of monarchy is going to drastically depend on whether you're the king or his subjects.

I don't really see a solution either. Men need to get off the apps and meet women in person, because otherwise they're fighting for the bottom of the barrel (I don't say this to put anyone down - the point is that you're going to have access to…

I think the 80/20 problem - the top 80% of women matching with top 20% of men [1] - is a major issue preventing dating (not hookups) with current apps. Most of my guy friends who use Tinder swipe right very generously because they don't match frequently, while my girl friends swipe conservatively since they match pretty much every other guy (or when they need a bit of an ego boost, they can just spam right swipes for a string of matches).

I believe the key problem is the high visibility of profile pictures, which makes it easy to stick to unrealistically high expectations for the physical attractiveness of people you're willing to talk with. This is reinforced by the constant stream of pictures - when you're swiping right on the couple of really attractive people every 15-20 profiles, it's much easier to swipe left on people who aren't unattractive to you, but just don't reach that level "ok this person is super hot". In other words, "super interesting and decent-looking", while traditionally a good combination, probably doesn't do particularly well on dating apps.

The 80/20 problem, then, comes from the fact that guys swipe right more often than girls, so girls end up matching with a ton of top 20% great-looking guys and feel no need to swipe on the other 80% of guys even though they often never have conversations that go anywhere (at least that's my impression from seeing the smokin hot dudes that my girl friends match with). To be honest, this seems fine for hookups,…

My point in favor of the present income distribution being "natural" is that statistically, income is even somewhat more equally distributed than Tinder likes. Both are indicators of how good you are/how much people want to deal with you: give you cash or have sex with you. If there is no 'trick' in either distribution, they must be distributed equally. They are. Income slightly more equally because of the minimum wage/social pressure on businesses to hire useless workers/government providing some crappy employment to useless people.

Wealth is less equally distributed than income or Tinder likes, because it's an antiderivative of income distribution, also completely natural. And also because of the generational factor: you are very unlikely to get swiped right because of who your dad was, but your dad could have left you some cash or connections.

And yes, income is less equally distributed now than in 2008 exactly for the same reason as millenials having less sex on average than X-ers had in 2008: because we now have Tinder and it makes picking best partners a lot easier, resulting in top 1% best having sex with everyone with just scaps left for others. Money follows the same way due to the same factor of the smartphones and the Internet in general: success has become infinitely scalable.

It's extremely hard to do anything at all about it. Maybe we just need to know about this as a fact of life and build social constructs to contain the resulting pressures.

[1]…

The norms around dating in liberal America have completely diverged from the ground reality.

Statistically, you are 3x as likely to meet your future spouse in the workplace than a bar/club.[1]

Let's take a look at the stereotypical man in STEM:

* Looks: Below 80 %ile --> Failure at Tinder[2]

* Socially: Below average --> No romantically successful friends groups to set them up

* Early life: Never cool in school / male dominant peer group --> Still single by the time they graduate

This massively raises the stakes of a workplace romantic encounter, because every other avenue has already been shut in their face.

At this point, "it's only harassment if you are undesirable" is a well known anecdote. So, uncharismatic + unattractive men are basically doomed. The alternative is to fully acknowledge the brutally objectifying nature of it all, objectify yourself and go for obnoxious outward displays of desirability. Ie. "look expensive" and target demographics that value your ability to be gainfully employed and accumulate moderate wealth.

The harder alternative is to hit the gym, learn social skills and actually learn how to be charismatic. This is way harder, especially when society actively ostracizes you. Like trying to make a fish climb a tree.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10135

[2] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a

I looked at that data together with my wife, and my analytical mind concluded that it's all bullshit with a clickbait title.

Take this for instance: https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a , based on 27 women, and he even says himself "Additionally, I am only accounting for the percentage of “likes” and not the actual men they “like”. I have to assume that in general females find the same men attractive. I think this is the biggest flaw in this analysis".

So yeah, basically you can throw away any conclusion there. Other articles are based on this "study". But maybe there are new studies that I haven't seen yet.

I have a problem with the word "hottie" because we men know very well which girls fall into this category. But because women have way more and different dimensions to select on, a male photo model doesn't have as much attraction as you would expect.

Men in that sense are really lucky, because we can boost our attractiveness pretty good. Women on the other hand, if you don't have the looks, there is only so much you can do with makeup.

This has actually been studied quite a bit, and it would appear that the increased optimization of dating apps has caused a huge inequality in the dating "market". It can even be quantified with the Gini Coefficient, a measure of economic inequality. [1]

> It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.

And anecdotally, it is consistent with what I have observed. I am troubled by the effect this might have on our society. I am sure that it is sowing resentment among those who have been left behind. Our society is more sexualized than ever; people are bombarded with messages about how great sex is, and yet it is less available than ever.

[1]: https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a