
Impersonators who are paid to flirt on dating apps - imartin2k
https://qz.com/1247382/online-dating-is-so-awful-that-people-are-paying-virtual-dating-assistants-to-impersonate-them/
======
laurieg
It is very informative to make a an online dating profile of the opposite
gender. I'm a man, but when I made an account on tinder with a female friend's
pictures I was blown away by just how radically different the experience was.

Almost every person would match with me. Everyone would message me straight
away. If I didn't reply most would message again in a few hours. A few would
get very angry/upset that I didn't reply.

I think Tinder is a real stroke of genius. All users, men and women, get given
the same interface and the same choices. But of course things are not really
equal. Men shotgun and women pick and choose. Tinder has essentially made
Bumble, but they have plausible deniability. No need to enforce any rules
about women messaging first when that emerges naturally.

~~~
aphextron
I worked for $large_dating_site for a number of years. The real genius of
Tinder was giving women the power. We came to the same realization as well:
that no matter how bad you make the user experience for men, they will use the
app endlessly if real women are there. Online dating business models are
exclusively based around enticing men with sex, and giving women the power to
choose precisely who they want.

~~~
baron816
What I’ve long wondered is how women react in the real world now that they
have all the power on dating apps. Why would they try to find a date in any
other way?

There were a few articles that came out a few years ago arguing that, no,
dating apps were terrible for women because it makes men even more
noncommittal with such easy access to dates. My hypothesis was that the women
they interviewed for those pieces were all going after the same small group of
elite men. Thus, ~3% of the whole male population is sleeping around with ~20%
of the female population. Makes me wonder if polygamy is the natural course of
things.

~~~
chillacy
That's historically the case:
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/women-men-
dn...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/women-men-dna-human-
gene-pool)

The other implication of polygamy is that a lot of men simply didn't have a
chance to pass on their genes at all.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I sometimes wonder if a big reason why monogamous marriage exists as a concept
in human society is as a strategy for mitigating violent upheaval. By using
cultural pressure to force single-partner relationships (at least on the
surface), you no longer had a large group of sexually frustrated men with
nothing to lose looking around and wondering how to get a piece of what the
elite have that they don't.

~~~
aphextron
A lot of what we think of as “marriage” comes from the entirety of human
history where women were bought and sold as bargaining chips in their male
family member’s lives. They were used to ensure inheritance, line of
succession, and to cement business relationships. Not until just the past
couple centuries in western society has there even been a concept of marrying
for romantic love.

~~~
grrmx1
Behavior you describe is traditionally attributed to the upper classes of pre-
modern nobility. At least that's how popular imagination paints it (see Game
of Thrones).

I am not so sure this was modus operandi for commoners when it came to
marriage. Caste-bound poor village dwellers, with few prospects and no family
wealth to maintain, I imagine married for love more often than not.

~~~
watwut
Poor village workers had to work physically and strength mattered a lot. Also,
you paid taxes per household making it very hard for single women to make it.
E.g. girl has to marry cause living without man is super hard.

You dated two weeks at 15 and then announced marriage and then it was for
live.

~~~
grrmx1
And that somehow precludes marrying for love?.. You are a village girl, you've
been around the village, you know all the boys you age. You marry the one you
like. Love.

I am not denying that pre-arranged marriages are a thing, and that they played
a more prominent role in the past, but to say that genuine love played no part
in the match making process until 200 years ago, like the OP suggested, is an
exaggeration.

Love is a part of human evolutionary toolbox, it's been around for a while.
Accordingly, the subject of love, and marrying for love, comes up in literary
works since the start of recorded history.

------
6cd6beb
I figured something like this would exist, but I don't think it's very useful.

I've walked the dark path of trying to implement "pickup artist"
material(can't imagine that'll be received well), and I can say that:

    
    
      A) an objective approach works (if you're humble and willing to recognize/adjust for failure)
      B) there's a torrent of snake oil out there
      C) you learn a lot when you try this stuff. A lot.
    

A lot of that material is laughably bad, but the general formula of "know your
value, be confident and unapologetic about what you want, be ready to accept
'no' quickly and gracefully" is the buried gold. Maybe it's just me but
grinding through failure after failure after failure taught me those things.

You can't buy them, and if you don't have them, it shows in your behavior.

You can't have someone Cyrano de Bergerac your way into a date by behaving
that way, because in the end the girl shows up and meets _you_.

Furthermore, the proposition that this is a service for people who don't have
time to send messages in these apps doesn't hold water. Not having the time to
respond promptly is an asset. Bailing on some conversations is an asset.
You're a busy man with a lot going on, not a desperate man glued to every
prospect.

That's my two cents.

~~~
xarball
While I agree with the general thrust of this, and am perfectly fine with the
consequences and outcomes that redpill might land you if you're showing
responsibility and taking steps to flirt with someone to such length -- I
genuinely loathe appealing to a stereotype of women that are interested in
this, because the kind of person it appeals to, or the kind of relationship it
generates doesn't get me anything I like when it works!

That is to say, unless I feel like being more plastic than a Ken barbie doll,
and less significant in identity, emotion, and purpose than the next 5,000 Ken
models off the factory line, then I don't see how I couldn't possibly feel any
_more_ alone after applying redpill?

What I found after taking redpill and succeeding by their standards, I didn't
find myself in any way _happier_ or more at peace with myself, or happier in
the company of anyone that is attracted to that. Maybe it has just been highly
successful at producing traumatic experiences, which does help me grow. But
there has been nothing redpill or the women it has been able to match me with
that has been able to counter the type of gutless, "take-take", or just purely
sexual tension-oriented relationships it seems to encourage men to get
involved with! Those are highly destructive experiences if you're not careful.

My peace of mind is worth so much more than that.

I can respect redpill, because I understand what it's for. But I don't enjoy
the people it connects me with. I think it boils down to a lack of a proper
examination of personal happiness in redpill's promise at large, and i don't
think they contend with that subject nearly as much as they should! (Though I
can understand why the women like it, because it encourages men to not care
about what they need to grow as a person, while essentially demeaning them to
the point of being uncompensated and emotionally-deprived and ego-devalued sex
servants =P)

~~~
duwease
Exactly. I think there's a huge flaw in even the toned-down version of that
that both sexes buy into -- making a dating profile (or just their public
personality) as generically appealing as possible. Yes, highlighting your
travel and exercise pics to the exclusion of all else will probably get you
more dates.. but how satisfying will the connection generally be? "Likes:
food, laughter, exercise, travel, dogs" tells me maybe 1% of the information I
need to know to determine compatibility.. especially when most people are
exaggerating the importance of the travel and the exercise in their daily
life. So the 'matches' made on those generic terms, in my experience, are
largely unsatisfying and based on physical attraction -- not exactly the
recipe for a rewarding long-term relationship.

Meanwhile, the people who were bold enough to actually talk about their more
individualized interests got my attention and resulted in some great
conversation and dates, even if they didn't result in relationships.

I fell into the trap in my 20's of being generically appealing. I did very
well in the 'dating' market, had attractive partners, married a particularly
beautiful one. Then I realized that 'success rate' meant squat other than a
minor ego boost, and I was stuck with a person attracted to generically
appealing me and not ME. And physical attraction fades.

Luckily I got out of that situation, started representing myself accurately,
and I live in a large enough city to be able to find at least some women
online who do the same. The conversation, dates, and relationships have been
SO much more rewarding, because the people connect with ME and not a
generically appealing version of me.

I think being generically appealing does build confidence, and confidence is
important. But hopefully redpillers and all the generic profile creators
online can eventually see the value of specificity.. and attracting quality
over quantity. I think it'll breed a lot more happy relationships.

------
factsaresacred
His blog may not be to everyone's taste, but the writer 'Delicious Tacos'
pioneered this with OK Cupid years ago. On his blog he shares his online
dating exploits along with some nice openers ("You are attractive, and I want
to go out with you. Basically" being one that I stole and overused).

Anyway, all that online dating made him horribly cynical. But damn if it
doesn't make for good writing:

> _If she doesn’t give the number, if she ignores your request and tries to
> continue the conversation– it’s dead. Maybe means no. Hesitation means no.
> I’ve had a few exceptions. But frankly, if a woman wants to make you work
> for it, it’s an insult. And all online conversation is just a chance to f%ck
> up. The point of OKCupid is that we are dehumanized slabs of f%ckmeat and
> there are a million of us. No individual matters. Move on._

For more: [https://delicioustacos.com/2014/08/04/okcupid-starter-kit-
co...](https://delicioustacos.com/2014/08/04/okcupid-starter-kit-copy-this-
and-tell-me-what-happens/)

~~~
noir_lord
I heard the horror stories about online dating however my experience as a man
was nothing but positive.

I got responses maybe half the time and a date (coffee, nothing involving
alcohol) maybe a third - I probably messaged 15 women over a year.

Two proper relationships and one that is two years old in July and I plan to
spend the rest of my life in.

I did not use the shotgun approach, I excluded any woman who didn't fill her
profile in with information (if they don't tell you about themselves how the
hell do you know if you have anything potentially in common), excluded ones
with terrible spelling and grammar (I'm not Chaucer but again it shows effort)
and then only replied to ones where we had at least some interests in common
(the two relationships where cycling and heavy metal respectively).

I wasn't looking for one night stands, didn't push for dates, asked questions
relevant to their interests and discussed mine.

And it was all fine.

My current partner showed me her messages after we'd been dating for a while
and it was just a sea of "hey Babi, want sum fuck?", I mean she speaks three
languages and has a degree in finance that approach was never going to open a
conversation.

My bar was "if I didn't find this person attractive would I want to be friends
with them?"

If the answer wasn't yes then it was a pass.

I wasn't on there just for sex, if that was the goal I can just go out on the
piss on a Saturday night.

I also avoided tinder like the plague, it's just too shallow (for me), I did
like OKC though (where I met my current partner).

~~~
virgil_disgr4ce
OK, so... since no one else has asked... are you really hot?

~~~
blablabla123
I realize the targeted approach also works much better for me than the shotgun
approach. (Should this be surprising? ;) Speaking of myself, I'm not hot,
barely average lol.

So I signed up at OKC before and deleted my account at some point frustrated.
Actually I even had 2 dates through it - after tons of right swiping and
writing so many messages that I had to delete ones from my Sent folder.

When I recently signed up again, at first it didn't really work out again. I
swiped right when I thought the person looks good.

So I changed my approach: I swipe right when I imagine I would feel at least
kind of comfortable meeting that person. And tadah, I have far more matches.
Also I recommend stopping to write a person immediately when there is
obviously no interest, that just brings frustration which doesn't improve the
writing in turn. So I think 3 women were then willing to date me, although
somehow it didn't happen because of difficulties finding a proper date/time.
(Yup that also changed, I prioritize realworld higher than online ;) - doesn't
really help with dating but maybe better for general happiness)

------
throwaway_234
I guess unless your good looking to hot as a guy Tinder is crickets as girls
filter you out.

I'm bi so i use all apps .. i sure as hell wish Tinder was like Grindr and
Scruff are for me. Open either app and have tons of messages .. pick and
choose who you want to chat with and boom you have a collection of potential
guys to meet up with for fun when the mood hits you. I guess that's what its
like for average to good looking to hot women ... have a collection of guys to
pick, choose and chat. Guess it's the Same for good looking to hot str8 guys.

Not surprised about paid dating apps and their fake news scams. Match.com
suddenly sends you a ton of winks and messages just as your subscription is
about to expire yet there all fake or paid impersonators. Not sure how that is
legal?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
> Guess it's the Same for good looking to hot str8 guys.

Unless you don't meet the minimum height requirement. That's more important
than looks.

~~~
legionof7
I honestly feel that IRL, height is less important than a lot of people think.
I'm a 5'5 man.

~~~
chrischen
It is ultimately superficial once someone knows more about you, but that
doesn't stop people from setting it as their pre-filter before they see what
they truly want.

You ask people to improve the carriage, they'll tell you to make a faster
horse. If you ask a woman what they want, they'll tell you tall dark and
handsome.

~~~
nojvek
Dark?

~~~
chrischen
"Tall dark and handsome" is a Western cliche. You can adjust it as you see fit
based on regional prejudices.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> As we grow accustomed to foisting more and more complicated emotional tasks
> onto digital butlers, we lose our ability to tolerate inelegance or find
> value in social failure. Moments of awkwardness and heartbreak are an
> inevitable part of the dating experience, and they are essential in our
> evolution into mature adults.

That is a very recent, Western view of finding a partner. For much of history,
and even now in large parts of the world, a person's family had/has the job of
finding a suitable match often with the aid of "professional" matchmakers. I
wonder what percentage of people who grew up in this current Western model of
individuals dating and finding partners would trade it for the other model if
they could?

~~~
noobermin
This is not like courtship or arranged marriages. In what you call "much of
history" it was done openly and it was clear that you were arranging a
marriage for you son or daughter or what have you. This is more covert and
deceitful.

------
mathgenius
I can see the evolution of this: ripe for machine learning disruption. Then in
a few years all we have are AI bots chatting each other up, and then informing
us who we are to mate.

~~~
Casseres
You might like the TV series _Black Mirror_. Especially Season 4 Episode 4.

~~~
sanderjd
One of my favorite episodes of the whole run, actually.

------
twothamendment
Back in the chat room days, I jumped into one that I knew was frequented by a
male coworker. I'm male, but picked a female name and started to chat with
him. Since we were local he suggested meeting up. That would have been a bit
awkward, so I gave him the address to my friend's all girls apartment and the
name of her roommate. She ended up marrying the stranger who showed up
unannounced at her door.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Now that's a hell of a story! We're you invited to the wedding?

~~~
twothamendment
Yes, and they made me stand up when they told the story.

------
siliconc0w
Standard 'its a three legged stool' spiel. Photos, profile, and messaging.
Really messaging is the easiest part. Here is a high-conversion-rate formula:

    
    
        0) playful message about profile/photo
        1) flirt for one or two exchanges
        2) pivot to drinks.  I like the highly elaborate, "Sounds like something we could take about over drinks, are you free this week?"
    

Photos are probably the easiest way to stand out. Most guys seem to just do
the 'house selfie in a t-shirt' thing. If you try a bit harder and maybe hire
a friend for a sunny afternoon with a few changes of clothes to take some
creative pictures you can generally do better than 99% percent of guys in your
'range'. This is to say if you're a 7, you gotta date <=7s. This, like the
speed of light, seems to be a hard constant of the universe.

~~~
icebraining
If you're a 7 dating a 5, didn't the 5 break the constant?

Reminds me of this story:

 _One day in September, in a conference room populated with about 25 members
of the Mac team, Steve [Jobs] was lecturing on how to hire._

 _" A players hire A players," he said. "B players hire C players. Do you get
it?"_

 _Apparently not. Somebody in the back of the room raised his hand and asked,
"so how do you hire more B players?"_

[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=How_to_Hire_Insanely_Great_Employees.txt)

~~~
siliconc0w
Like the speed of light, reference frames matter. The 5 convinced you they
were a >=7.

------
vinceguidry
I wonder if dating is one of the few arenas of human life in which tools and
services to make it easier create invariably bad ethics. When you boil it all
down, mating is an adversarial process dressed up as a cooperative one, making
deception the order of the day. Tools and services, even with the best of
intentions, wind up only serving those deceptive purposes.

In my own life, despite being an uber-introverted nerd, I've gravitated
towards just the normal way of finding people I'm interested in in person and
just asking them out. The advantage of this is feedback is much easier to
intuit when the person you're asking out is right there in front of you.

I don't really see the point anymore in spending large amounts of time and
effort to optimize a algorithmic online search pattern when daily life in a
city gives one all the bandwidth one could ever need to find someone.

------
minikomi
This is a major part of the Japanese "dating app" experience - they're known
as "Sakura"; same as the offline version of people who are paid to, for
example, play pachinko and win or stand in line excitedly to buy something.
Most Japanese dating apps also don't have a free mode, and require you to use
coins or some such token to message or even view profiles. They use Sakura to
run down your coins, and then message you saying they want to meet up --
"Message me back! Let's make plans!". Rinse and repeat.

------
sp527
The most important takeaway from this article is that knowing how to flirt IRL
is a bigger competitive advantage than ever.

------
fimdomeio
I'm pretty sure we're very close to getting a I'll Have Sex For You As A
Service. I love how the article tries to show the moral dilemas but I see
none... you're getting paid to impersonate someone else in a kind of
interpersonal relationship. That is just plain awful, I don't see how a
dilemma can exist there.

------
chatmasta
About eight years ago I knew a teenager making over $100k a month sending
dating site affiliate offers through Chatroulette. He had a bot that setup a
fake stream and then pushed the affiliate links in the chat.

This is _not_ new. Back then it was affectionately called “e-whoring.”

~~~
walrus01
The new thing with this is hiring offshored clickfarm workers (basically the
same recruit pool of people who would be farming gold in WoW for $1.25/hour in
a developing nation, or working in an IRS-scam call center), who multitask and
use a set of pre-prepared scripts and their own customizations to have a few
lines of back and forth chat with the (mostly male) rubes, then send them an
affiliate link to get them to click on. This has the advantage of putting a
human in the loop to solve captchas, and enough randomness from the human's
behavior that the bot-like behavior is not immediately apparent.

------
wpietri
I don't even get this. If you don't have time to date, how would you have time
for a relationship?

~~~
JoshCole
I think your confusion comes because online dating isn't dating. A date takes
potentially a couple of hours at max. Online dating refers to the process of
searching for someone to date via the internet. A date can take an hour or
two. Looking for a date online can take hundreds of hours without any results
save for a few catfish scams.

~~~
wpietri
I think you've confused "going on date" with "dating". The process called
"dating" has always included the initial part of sorting through possible
prospects to go on a date with. Online dating is more efficient than what went
before.

The process has also included getting-to-know-you conversation and trust-
building, neither of which this impersonation accomplishes.

A date does take a couple of hours max. But if it works, it blossoms into a
relationship, which takes significant time. And that same sort of significant
time can be applied to dating.

~~~
JoshCole
Dating has multiple different meanings in English. Not only do I know this,
but you're attempt to correct me is a re-statement of what I said in my own
post: dating can refer to the process of finding someone to begin dating.

Online dating can be a long torturous experience. That is why people are
saying they want to skip it and do the parts that are enjoyable. Some because
it was long and people don't have time for it. Some because it can be
torturous and life is too short to put up with that.

~~~
wpietri
Dating can be a long, difficult experience, on line or off. So the online part
is irrelevant here except that it makes fraud possible.

I understand that humans in general are lazy, and normally I am fine with
that. But a) being lazy is different than not having time, b) if you don't
have time to date, you also don't have time for a relationship, and c) you
can't just skip the early parts of building a relationship. That's not how
dating works.

~~~
JoshCole
Dating offline can be one of the most frightening euphoric experiences a
person will ever have even if the result of an attempted approach is
rejection. I remember asking a girl out for the first time. It was nothing
like swiping right a few hundreds times and then sending a message to someone
who swiped back only to never receive a response. I felt so good that it
scared me even hours later when I was no longer feeling the euphoria. There
are huge differences between dating online and offline. Real differences that
really matter.

It isn't true that online dating isn't relevant to whether a person can have
time in their life for online dating.

When people talk about not having time for something, they are speaking in a
metaphorical sense about the value of their time. Truly, most people have time
to count to a million, but most people don't have time to count to a million.

------
walrus01
If you really want to see something weird (from an American perspective) take
a look at "matrimonial" websites such as shaadi.com , and Indian dating apps.
The selection criteria for ethnic groups and religions! In the North American
melting pot it's crude and racist to put blunt preferences in a dating ad, in
India (and Pakistan, and Bangaldesh) apparently it's the norm.

~~~
throw0984320
I don't see what's wrong in being upfront about what you want and facilitating
that. It keeps the process simple and works as a pretty good initial filter.

While you're talking about the melting pot in the western world, it just so
happens that eventually most whites end up with just whites, and blacks just
blacks. Most beautiful women end up with rich men, and religious people end up
with religious people. Long term "melting pot" relationships aren't as common
as you think. If sexual selection eventually filters all but those common
traits, why not be blunt about them?

E.g., while the Indian dating sites you talk about bluntly list salary,
western sites use complicated proxies (like interests == international
tourism, or your profile photo with a tesla you own).

That dating has to be complicated and subtle and what you need has to only be
"hinted" isn't any better than being blunt about what you're looking for, and
being blunt about what value you think you'll provide to the other. At the
least, you'll have saved time and heartbreaks.

~~~
walrus01
I didn't say that it's wrong, just that it's weird and different from American
cultural norms. Things americans do are weird and different to Indians. I
think one of the main differences, and this is a gross overgeneralization, is
that south asian dating sites and apps are much more aimed at people who are
looking for marriage. Whereas Americans enjoy "casual dating" \- good luck
getting a casual dating app to take off in Peshawar, Pakistan.

~~~
tossaway1
What makes you say it's weird and different? Match.com lets you filter by
ethnicity and faith...

~~~
walrus01
here's some more "traditional" matrimonial ads:

[http://www.thehindu.com/classifieds/matrimonial/](http://www.thehindu.com/classifieds/matrimonial/)

there's a whole jargon and set of acronyms that takes some puzzling out. I
guess what I was trying to write in my original post, is that if someone is
developing software/database/backend (or presentation layer) for a dating
website or app, that there's a considerable diversity of ways people search
for certain criteria, other than those that are commonly seen on a site like
plenty of fish, bumble, etc.

sort of like this problem: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

------
spodek
HN being mostly male and as a guy, I've seen this discussion on the
frustrations of online dating and how the system evolves many times.

Are there similar threads in mostly female communities to see their
perspective?

~~~
pc86
Any mostly female community on the internet inevitably gets overrun with men
trying to provide their perspective. /r/twoxchromosomes on Reddit is now
75-80% male in the comments, or more.

~~~
spodek
Sounds like the boy scouts in real life. It seems to happen in both
directions.

------
mynegation
Shameless plug for a friend who described the experience of having virtual
dating assistants in a book: "Dating Vandalized".

[https://www.amazon.ca/Dating-Vandalized-Katerina-Lyadova-
ebo...](https://www.amazon.ca/Dating-Vandalized-Katerina-Lyadova-
ebook/dp/B071YKY2PV/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1524832672&sr=8-3&keywords=lyadova)

------
flamtap
Sexism aside, the morality of this service is interesting. What if this
service was involved in a match, and some time later the couple married?

~~~
DoctorOetker
simply keep up the appearance that everything was "sincere" from the get go?

~~~
ggm
Ah yes, because relationships founded on white lies are the _best_ ones.

~~~
DoctorOetker
oh I see! you are right, I thought we were only talking about extramarital
marriages...

------
topranks
New Turing test-like challenge...

Build an AI to automate this process using the same guidelines.

------
chmaynard
This just confirms my strong distrust of online messaging with a stranger.
Life is short. If you can't agree to meet me for coffee and conversation in a
neutral location, I'm not interested.

------
lolc
This is how it will end:

[https://www.oglaf.com/performance-
anxiety/](https://www.oglaf.com/performance-anxiety/)

Not safe for work obviously.

And at least they're honest.

------
2474
Hold on... So there are companies out there that you can pay to do your
flirting for you?

I don't know what this says about us as people, but damn... that's so sad.

------
golergka
> This messaging “blast” technique may appear lucrative compared to the
> average neighborhood yenta, but it has occurred to me that good matchmaking
> may not be in the company’s financial interest. When a client pairs up, they
> leave the service.

This is only true if client is looking for a long-term monogamous
relationship.

------
Liron
Founder of Relationship Hero (YC S17) here.

We also help with online-dating messages, but we'll help you to improve your
own communication skills. Text flirting seems like such a trivial thing, but
getting better at it can be life-changing, because it ultimately leads to
better relationships.

------
sorokod
If you squint just a bit, these impersonators look a lot like headhunters /
recruitment agents.

------
partycoder
This should be considered fraud.

~~~
saryant
.

~~~
partycoder
Except that some dating apps have micropayments in them. e.g: they sell you
the ability to bump you in search results.

Keeping you engaged with fake activity to increase the chances of becoming a
paying user seems very questionable.

------
chrischen
Honestly if you're lazy enough to rely on the superficialness of online dating
apps like Tinder, you're already in a gray area. If you're judging people
purely by looks (which would be an inefficiency since in real life in person
looks aren't as important), then someone else is justified in re-balancing
that inefficiency by doing something like hiring a text writer.

~~~
kowdermeister
> looks aren't as important

That's not true for the majority. Looks are the first signal you notice of the
other person. Unless you are after poets, artists or other people whose work
reach other people without "the looks" then I don't see how - even
subconsciously - it's not important. Pics are furthermore do indicate
personality.

I agree that Tinder is an industrial scale meat grinder, but the advantage is
that wide exposure is better for your chances. It's like saying HI to a tons
of people on the street you otherwise wouldn't meet.

~~~
magduf
The thing about Tinder that sucks is that you don't get a very good idea about
a person from it, because all you get is a few pictures and if you're lucky, a
very short free-form text session where hopefully they wrote something
substantive about themselves.

However, the thing that makes Tinder great (and also Bumble, though I haven't
tried that one yet) is that both parties must "like" each other for any
messaging to occur. This still isn't the norm on "traditional" dating sites,
for some reason. The traditional sites are bad for men, because they're
encouraged to put forth a lot of effort to write meaningful messages to women,
but almost all the effort is simply wasted because most of them go to women
that have no interest in those men, and the man has no way of knowing this.

Tinder/Bumble fix this by forcing the woman to "like" a man's profile first,
before he wastes any time and effort writing her a message. It also helps
women by massively reducing the amount of unwanted messages they receive from
men: if they get unwanted messages, it's partly their fault (and entirely
under their control) for "liking" those men, and encourages them to be more
selective with their right-swipes (so maybe they'll come up with some
strategies for avoiding creeps, such as only right-swiping people with
something meaningful written in their profile, and not just guys with gym
selfies and backwards ball caps).

~~~
chrischen
I think the problem with "not enough information" is that if people actually
successfully progress from just using it to text each and count matches,
you'll find that using just looks is extremely inefficient in actually finding
quality matches. But seeing has how it's stereotypical for Tinder to be for
hookups (even though most people I know use it for dating), it's probably
justifiable for their intended use case.

~~~
magduf
Absolutely, for its _intended_ use case (hookups), it's absolutely a far more
efficient and utilitarian interface.

But for dating, I think it's pretty lousy. But as you said, most people (over
the age of 30 I suspect) seem to use it for dating, not casual sex. And
they're right to use it for that, because even though it's lousy IMO, it's
where everyone is, and despite the rest of the UI being lousy for selecting
quality matches IMO, the killer feature is the fact that both parties have to
"like" each other. Why other dating sites like OKcupid don't adopt this, I
have no idea, except maybe it's not good for their business model in their
view. For women I've talked to, sites like OKC are just awful because they get
so many unsolicited messages; this isn't much of a problem on Tinder and
Bumble since they're in control.

------
noobermin
The resemblance to the career of the lead character from Her is undeniable.

------
bandito11
Am I supposed to be utterly shocked this happens?

------
neves
If I create a dating app I'd use the VC money to contract some sex
professionals to create a great atmosphere.

------
andrewfromx
it's like that scene from the movie Hurt Locker
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1OOI6m4b7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1OOI6m4b7c)
where he's trying to decide which cereal from so many choices. Old fashion
family arranged marriages make so much sense to me now. JUST PICK SOMEONE!

------
misterbowfinger
Oh my lord, these comments are really surfacing the number of incels and MRA's
on hacker news. Wow.

When I hear criticisms of the tech community being so bro-y and full of
insecure dudes, I tend to rebuff them because I don't personally see it as
much. But man, that behavior is coming out in full force on this post.

~~~
forgottenpass
How lackadaisical has stereotyping gotten that that there is any overlap
between the sets {incels, MRAs} and {bros}?

Aren't they mutually exclusive by definition? Or does "bro" now mean "any men
I don't like"?

