
Cross-Country Love: Help Fly NYC Women to SF - laurenkay
https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/working-on-it
======
scoofy
Yea, this is a joke, right? Am i missing something? This seems like on of the
silliest idea i've heard in a long time. Once you start offering free flights,
wouldn't the incentive system immediately switch from finding love to free
vacation?

~~~
RyanZAG
What? There's no free flights here. This is the option of very expensive
flight+date, or a $20 lotto ticket to a chance of a flight. It's basically a
trap for the less sharp. Good luck to them, I guess.

~~~
scoofy
Maybe this appeals to the man or woman that thinks NYC/SF is a magical world
full of only people of the opposite sex. I just moved from NYC to SF, and it's
really not that exceptional of a difference.

Fair enough, let's play this out. Women are going to pay $500 (without
accommodations), to go on 3 dates, and fly back. Guys pay $100 for a cocktail
party with a plane full of ladies from New York. Then what happens? You pick
up and move your life across the continent for your love at first date, or do
you keep going on $500 first dates?

At some point someone has to move across the country. It'd make more sense to
me that, if you think NYC is some oasis overflowing with women... just move
there. It's not so hard. There is a tech sector, and it's really a fun place
to live. Just make sure you live by Carroll Gardens, because that's where i
noticed all the girls in Brooklyn seem to live. Women who want to move to
SF... Yea, um, good luck finding an apartment. See you in Oakland!

------
marquis
There is a long and amusing history of trying to balance gender ratios with
incentives. A fantastic story I read recently was a scheme by two brothers in
early 20th century Colorado attempted to entice women by building a school in
their remote mountainous areas. Two came to teach, one stayed. Not bad odds? I
grew up in the 80s were the only difficulty was getting the boys to dance with
you at the local disco when you were 14.

------
donretag
Why not send males over to NYC instead? (rhetorical question) The job market
can better support them. Not sure if San Francisco's job market can handle
more workers as easily.

I was born and raised in NYC and all I have to say is that I am glad that I
moved to California as a married man. The two cities are not in the same
league when it comes to both the quality and quantity of women (with the
definition of quality not specified).

------
untog
It's not like flights are that expensive, is it? It's the "actually moving
across the country" part that people don't follow through on. So either this
is a crowd-funded one night stand festival, or it's a failure.

------
pavel_lishin
It's really easy to mis-interpret this at a glance. I thought it was literally
asking people for money to fly random people to a different city for a date.

Instead, they're actually selling tickets - the cost includes flight, hotel,
and some sort of dating event. (You can also toss in $20 and maybe win a free
flight.)

I thought that Crowdtilt was more like Kickstarter, but it seems that it's
just a way to gather money for any arbitrary cause.

~~~
untog
_I thought it was literally asking people for money to fly random people to a
different city for a date_

That's one of the options. You can 'donate' to send 'additional' women. A good
few of the recent contributors have been men.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I thought, at first, it was the only option. I wonder how many other people
did.

------
murtza
This is a smart marketing stunt. It's a mutual win because it will generate
press for both the platform (CrowdTilt) and the user (The Dating Ring).

My hunch is The Dating Ring got the okay from CrowdTilt before launching this
campaign, and have an informal agreement in place to delete the campaign after
a few days, which will generate further press.

------
adlpz
Maybe I'm a bit childish, but I totally misread the little text that says
"Tilts at $10,000".

Yep, I'm sorry.

------
hristov
Are gender ratios really a problem in SF? I visited SF, and women there said
that if one excludes gay men, the ratio of women to men in san francisco tends
to be heavier on the women's side.

Anyone have their own experiences?

~~~
steven2012
San Francisco is one of the most, if not the most, gay-progressive cities in
the world, but it's not like gays dominate the demographics, except possibly
in Castro and adjacent neighborhoods. I thought I read that at best it's
something like 10-15% of the population, whereas the average percentage is
3-5%.

My single female friends complain that although the male:female ratio is
really high, the quality male: quality female ratio is very low. They complain
that many of the available males have personality defects and all the quality
males are snapped up relatively quickly.

------
sardonicbryan
It's almost like they read this (satire piece) and decided to try to validate
the idea... [http://www.leveragedsellout.com/2014/01/the-founder-
hounder/](http://www.leveragedsellout.com/2014/01/the-founder-hounder/)

------
rpsw
I'm sure there is some practical reasons (company based in SF, suitable
venues, flight schedules, etc) but would it not be better to fly women to SF
and men to NY and in equal measure?

------
rayiner
The "plane full of women" makes me think of "The Bachelor: Silicon Valley."

------
dguaraglia
Wow, this is just... really guys? Are women now a commodity we can ship from
the other side of the country? What happens when we realize the dating problem
in SF is actually more of an issue of misaligned priorities and unmatched
interests? Next step, import cheaper, hotter, more malleable women from some
poor country?

For the record, I'm a male and I'm offended. I can't even think what any of
the many great independent, free-thinking women I've met in San Francisco
would think about this.

------
rjzzleep
wouldn't a sugar daddy dating site be better suited for that?

[https://www.seekingarrangement.com](https://www.seekingarrangement.com)

------
diydsp
I'll just quote Julia, the founder of Zidisha.

"My objection to most handout programs is based on the negative psychological
effects I experienced time and again while working with development assistance
grants in Africa and Asia. The resources we distributed would certainly result
in an economic boost, but they also fundamentally changed the way the
recipients saw themselves, and the way we saw them. Handouts caused the
recipients to view themselves as dependents whose fortunes were subject to the
whims of luck and on pleasing donors, rather than on themselves as drivers of
their own lives. When repeated enough, this psychological side effect can be
devastating not only for the individual recipient, but for the broader
community that has come to depend on the handouts."

~~~
taylor-smith
I'm curious whether research backs up the claim that handout-type assistance
invokes this sort of self-perception, on an individual or group level. Do you
know of anything?

