
How to Make Online Dating Work - timr
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/opinion/sunday/how-to-make-online-dating-work.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-top-region&region=opinion-c-col-top-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-top-region&_r=0
======
jacques_chester
Some problems aren't really solvable. All you can do is move the suckiness
around.

Here's the problem: attraction is highly asymmetric. Many are attracted to
few.

Shrink a pool of heterosexual individuals to a pool to 3 men and 3 women --
the outcomes will still be asymmetric, with the majority of participants not
getting who they preferred.

No scheme, no twist, no app, no idea can change this, until the cyberpunk
vision of affordable beauty is a reality.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...until the cyberpunk vision of affordable beauty is a reality._

That vision is here - it's called eat right, exercise and act like a
man/woman.

The outcomes will be asymmetric but the inequality will be lower. The current
situation is tall hairy muscular guy dating pretty skinny blonde, while short
fat bald guy is lucky to get fat brunette ugly girl. The delta in utility
between the latter couple and the former could be massive.

If everyone improved themselves you'd have short bald confident ball of muscle
dating hot brunette butterface. Asymmetric, but the delta is pretty small.

~~~
fweespeech
Someone has never heard of chubby chasers XD

Some people actually prefer heavier people. So, no, that doesn't actually
solve the problem.

~~~
gregpilling
There are WAY more chubby chasers than the media would like to admit. I have
many friends that would want nothing to do with a Victoria Secret model.

------
gregpilling
I met my wife on Match in 2000, we have been together 15 years and have 4
kids.

Online dating was fun, especially if you use a little D.R.Y. and keep a text
file of all the things you would say over and over again. It becomes very easy
to 'mail merge' the best response to the ad you are looking at while still
sounding original.

Fun times, it was great to meet all sorts of women every week. I am still
friends with a 5 of them today. For me, the internet enabled me to meet 100x
more women that I would find interesting than otherwise.

~~~
puranjay
I used the exact opposite approach with online dating. I would write whatever
comes into my head with zero filtering. I didn't care if I got laid or not. I
just wanted to have fun.

My brain is better at coming up with quips than I realized. Once the mental
barriers were gone, I discovered a new ability to make people laugh

~~~
dzhiurgis
I find it much easier to be funny IRL. Introductions look so templated and
difficult to get right.

Also my friend noticed something about 90s - it was much nicer to start
talking with a person before seeing their entire life summarised, categorised
and carefully documented in picture feed.

------
somberi
I am married and one thing I hear from many of single _Male_ friends is that,
dating is expensive. I am talking from a narrow PoV of Manhattan, NYC.

A significant majority of dates end up by the man picking up the tab for a
dinner / drinks. This normally runs to $100 a night, if not more.

If the social custom of having to meet in a nice, but not necessarily swanky
place, takes a back seat, and if both pitch in for a reasonable meal, I think
more relationships will flourish.

------
sgt101
There's no science of attraction, once you realize that the whole thing is
easier. Who "rocks your world" will be defined by a very complex and
impossible to control set of interactions.

Remember both sides (you and the other) like to have a fantasy to invest in.
Leave room for the fantasy, be a little daring and a little assertive, do not
self sabotage, emphasize your value as a mate so that your partner will be
able to emphasize it to themselves and their friends. Hopefully you will see
something in your counterpart, if you do, don't go out of your way to snuff it
out - instead invest in it - what's wrong with focusing on his/her eyes and
not her ears?

On the other hand, neither side likes a jerk, don't be horrid, don't be rude,
be kind, be sensible, be gentle.

Don't quite be yourself, but mostly be yourself. Be the self you wish you were
- the movie version of yourself crossed with your mothers version of yourself.

Then - see what happens.

------
nadams
I have experiences and opinions on this but to keep it short:

It should really be split into several phases:

1) Take away profiles, pictures, zodiac signs, advanced algorithms and just
put some basic constraints and have a blind chatroulette type system.
Algorithms could be used for matching people like determining if they both
like the same movies or something. It might be good to give them a mutual
topic to talk about (same school, movies, games etc) - otherwise every chat
will start with "what is your favorite movie?"

2) Then let them decide if they want to share more information like sharing
their profile, pictures, zodiac signs.

3) If they still want to continue - have each independently check boxes of if
they want to see a movie and/or dinner and what movie/restaurant they would be
interested in (also include possible locations) and figure out a mutual date
based on those selections.

Much better than a cold approach and you know instantly that you are talking
with somebody on the other end (verification might be an interesting feature).

~~~
lnanek2
That would be fine for men, but women would just be flooded. They already get
thousands of messages on dating apps. They aren't going to go for something
that doesn't let them weed people out without a conversation first. That just
doesn't scale.

Genetically men have evolved to get as many women pregnant as possible, women
have evolved to be picky and decide which is best to spend 9 months having the
baby of. You aren't going to get a successful dating site only appealing to
men like your design where everyone is forced to have a conversation before
they can be picky.

~~~
nadams
> That would be fine for men, but women would just be flooded.

Can you explain what you mean by that - chatroulette style is that you
randomly are paired with one other person. And once the chat ends you have to
click a button to be paired again. The way I would see is that individuals
would login and click "pair me" and it would search pair with one and only one
other person (I think I would even go so far as to restrict them to one
conversation).

I suppose someone might not be paired with someone for some time but that is
the "risk" I suppose. Perhaps a timeout could help or a notification saying
"people are online that match what you are looking for".

------
J_Darnley
Step 1: be attractive.

~~~
azdle
Step 2: don't be unattractive

~~~
amelius
Or just _pretend_ to be attractive. People seem to like being fooled (we often
fool ourselves to feel good, see self-serving bias) so why not?

~~~
invisible_dust
MySpace angle, check.

------
auganov
I wonder how many of the couples that "met online" actually met on a dating
site/app. It sounds rather native to reduce the discussion to these. People
that use these are probably a self-selecting group that's not representative
of the whole population. Pretty much everybody I know that met someone online
[in a romantic context] was through regular social sites (facebooks,
instagrams, tumblrs etc).

------
ndomin
This article reads a lot different if you look at the authors first.

------
camgunz
Aziz Ansari wrote this? What doesn't that guy do?

------
kriro
A strange game.

The only winning move

is not to play.

;)

~~~
ourmandave
Do not go on a date with anyone with the on-line handle "Kobayashi Maru".

~~~
notNow
Or Lennay Kekua for that matter

------
elorant
The main problem of online dating is that men usually are looking for sex
while women for long-term relationships. Add to that the fact that in most
dating sites the analogy of men to women is at least 3 to 1 and you realize
pretty soon that it's a lose-lose game for most people.

~~~
nether
> Add to that the fact that in most dating sites the analogy of men to women
> is at least 3 to 1

I've never actually seen this proven. Did you scrape profiles? OkC staff have
repeatedly claimed that the ratio is around 50/50 for major metro areas:

[http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/older_lover/Age-Distribution-
With...](http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/older_lover/Age-Distribution-With-
Ratio.png)

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-male-female-ratio-on-
big-f...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-male-female-ratio-on-big-five-
dating-websites-Match-com-eHarmony-PlentyofFish-Zoosk-and-OKCupid/answer/Tom-
Jacques/comment/1085741)

~~~
tasqa
Heads up I'm not familiar with these kind of sites. But to quote the
Adultfriender hack article of last month:

Among the 26,939 users with a UK email address, for example, there are just
1,596 who identified as female: a ratio of one woman to every 16 men.[1]

[1] [http://www.channel4.com/news/adult-friendfinder-dating-
hack-...](http://www.channel4.com/news/adult-friendfinder-dating-hack-
internet-dark-web)

~~~
nether
Well AFF is unique in that it's explicitly a hookup site, and that might
naturally skew men. I'm not sure an even gender balance would even help
anything. With 1,000 men and 1,000 women, you'd still have the most attractive
women flooded with messages.

------
Thiz
I have a humble idea not tried yet in match making, no profiles, no
personality tests, just one simple fact I won't disclose. I don't need money,
I can do it all myself, what I need is users.

How do I get users once my MVP is ready?

Perhaps a cofounder expert in marketing is the right solution?

~~~
downandout
If you need users, then you do need money. The online dating app scene is
insanely competitive. The last one to go naturally viral was Tinder, but the
odds of duplicating that success are infinitesimal.

~~~
volaski
Tinder didn't go viral naturally, it was pure hustle

