
The Lie Hollywood Loves to Tell - joshmattvander
http://jmtame.posthaven.com/the-lie-hollywood-loves-to-tell/
======
djcapelis
It was creepy the moment it wanted to authorize so much information from
Facebook. Got creepier the moment the site asked me to start involving my
friends without me knowing whether or not they wanted to be involved. Got
super frustrating that my ability to even see how this site worked required me
to drag my friends into this mess without their consent.

And from what I can see, there's no way for me to specify which genders I'm
actually interested in meeting. (Yes, I know if I make profiles from my
friends I can filter the people _I'm_ looking for, but do you give me filters
to let people know I'm not straight and therefore not interested in _them_?)
If you're not straight, this type of thing is really critical. I'm not
interested in messages from men and on OKC, I use the wonderful checkbox that
makes it so that straight people can't even see my profile. That checkbox
alone plays a big role in turning online dating from a lousy situation into a
bearable one. Your writeup makes it sound like you only considered the dating
patterns of straight people and your site doesn't appear to even bother to
think about anything else. You appear to have mostly made a better dating site
for you and people like you without realizing that dating is _complicated_ and
a bunch of people involved in a good dating ecosystem aren't going to be you,
or anything like you.

I'll stick with OKC. (Which, by the way, I think is mostly great.)

~~~
ahh
So...90% of people, give or take, are straight.

Online dating is a clusterfuck of failure for straight people (ask anyone
who's tried it, or the OP.)

Online dating mostly works for gays and lesbians (you say so, I've seen the
same from others.)

And this guy is an idiot for trying to cater to the straight dating market?
Precisely why?

~~~
djcapelis
> So...90% of people, give or take, are straight.

And a lot of those straight people may one day get involved with, have been
involved with or may find themselves interested in someone who isn't straight.
Many of whom are bi (or queer or whatever label) and most of whom do very very
much care about being on a site that doesn't just serve straight people since
they're open to dating both straight and non-straight folks.

So if a site is inclusive, the straight dating pool should be larger too. Even
if you decide the only thing you care about is straight people.

> Online dating is a clusterfuck of failure for straight people (ask anyone
> who's tried it, or the OP.)

Funny enough, I can just ask myself, since I did use online dating to date
plenty of straight people before coming to my senses.

Also, I have a fair number of straight friends, a lot of them appreciate OKC a
lot and use it regularly with good results.

The people I hear complaining about it most often are usually people who are
just angry about the fact that they can't get dates... online or offline. It
turns out there's a lot of frustrated straight people out there, but there's
also just a lot of straight people out there. Assuming that online dating
works magically well for gay/lesbian folks but doesn't for straight people
seems like a really large leap to make and also seems really untrue from what
I've heard. (I've known LGBT folks who haven't found online dating to be that
great and I should also note that in general offline dating can be harder for
LGBT folks (especially in some parts of the world) than for straight folks and
online dating looks pretty good by comparison.)

> And this guy is an idiot for trying to cater to the straight dating market?
> Precisely why?

Well first off, I never actually said that. What I did say was that the way
the site felt it felt like it was designed with a pretty narrow frame of how
dating worked and that narrow frame was likely going to be a problem in a
bunch of ways. For me, it doesn't work at all for a bunch of reasons. For
others, it'll likely be something else.

Look, if he was making a conscious design choice to only care about straight
people, that's a thing you could do in a defensible way and you could probably
design something pretty cool. But it didn't feel like a conscious decision, it
felt like a decision that was made because someone didn't think through their
problem well enough to even realize the things they didn't think about. And
that's the real problem.

~~~
ahh
> Assuming that online dating works magically well for gay/lesbian folks but
> doesn't for straight people seems like a really large leap to make and also
> seems really untrue from what I've heard

Of course it isn't perfect for all of them, but it's a much less dysfunctional
market than the straight one. Which means there's less of a business model in
catering to gays and lesbians there (doubly true given that they're rare.)

And yes, in theory, straight people can date bi people, but again, by not
perfectly serving that bi market you cut off a tiny fraction of your
clientele. Screw up the straight market and your site is doomed. Which should
he focus on?

> What I did say was that the way the site felt it felt like it was designed
> with a pretty narrow frame of how dating worked

Yes, that's called "targeting a particular market."

------
fossuser
I think you're right about a lot of the problems with dating websites - I
wrote about this recently too here
(<http://www.zacharyalberico.net/blog/dating-websites/>).

I remember checking your site out when you posted it and it's nice to see
someone trying something actually new, but I feel like this concept doesn't
solve the common problems and adds some new ones.

Women will still be over messaged and men are still under messaged. People
still ignore profiles in favor of photos - what does this change?

Now you need your friends to create a profile for you (granted at least it's
not of the essay variety) and you need your friends to try and find people for
you? I have a hard time seeing anyone doing that considering it's a relatively
boring process with little return (the problem with the current sites).

I also think women are even less likely to use it considering your own point
about them not wanting to involve their own friends. I would think people
would also want to play a role in the selection considering it's a pretty
subjective/personal thing.

Definitely awesome to see something new though and hopefully you prove me
wrong and it works better than I suspect.

~~~
jmtame
_Women will still be over messaged and men are still under messaged. People
still ignore profiles in favor of photos - what does this change?_

Aren't you more interested in reading what somebody's friend has to say about
them rather than what they're saying about themselves? Also, we have Facebook
accounts (100+ friends required to join) which are not easy to replicate and
we can rate limit. On OkCupid, the worst that happens is they ban you for
spamming, and then you come back under a different username. Sure, girls might
recognize the same photos, but you're fundamentally a free radical in the
system.

 _Now you need your friends to create a profile for you (granted at least it's
not of the essay variety) and you need your friends to try and find people for
you? I have a hard time seeing anyone doing that considering it's a relatively
boring process with little return (the problem with the current sites)._

It relies on reciprocity, and it's actually fun when you try it out. If you're
commenting on your friends' profiles, they'll naturally want to comment on
yours. All of the comments on my profile happened not because I asked my
friends to do that, but because I started out by commenting on theirs.

With the stigma, it's largely an issue skewed by age. More women in their 30s
using dating sites socially, the sites just aren't designed to be social.

~~~
fossuser
The facebook reputation barrier is a good idea - should set a bar for the low
end of quality.

I see your point about the reciprocity, makes sense and I wouldn't worry about
the stigma - if your site catches on the stigma will just die faster.

I'm not sure I'd be more receptive to what a friend has to say about someone,
but that's generally because what anyone says doesn't matter when the
sent/received message ratio is so bad (which is what I tried to fix with the
marking idea).

Cool though - will definitely keep following it to see how it goes.

~~~
nawitus
>The facebook reputation barrier is a good idea - should set a bar for the low
end of quality.

Wait, are people with lots friend "high quality people" or "low quality
people"?

~~~
fossuser
I meant quality as a reference to spam and spam like accounts. If you can't
easily just create a new account or create multiple accounts then that
eliminates those kinds of issues.

------
rayiner
Maybe it's my social circle (busy pushing-30 professionals) but I think there
is almost zero stigma among my friends over online dating. In fact, less so
among women than among men. Men for some reason feel they have to play the bar
scene even if they don't like it or aren't good at it, but women feel no such
need. Indeed, for a lot of my women friends, online dating offers the very
real advantage that it's socially acceptable for women to actively choose in
an online context, while in meat space the social convention involves their
waiting for the loudest, drunkest guy to come up and hit on them.

~~~
potatolicious
It's highly geographical. Cities with a dating "scene" are _far_ friendlier
towards online dating than otherwise.

From your past posts it looks like you're NYC-based. NYC is _by far_ (IMO) the
best place to set up an online dating shop, since this city is by a _very_
long shot the most accepting of online dating in the US.

Disclaimer: I work for a NYC-area online dating shop.

In many other cities, and in many subcultures and scenes, online dating is
still very much stigmatized. I can't help but think that author would've
gotten a _very_ different perspective if he didn't choose to interview people
at a bar in the SF Marina of all places (read: notorious area for meathead
jocks and their female counterparts).

~~~
klipt
Not only that, but NYC has more single women than men. Which explains the
eagerness of women there to do the choosing, and their openness to new dating
methods in general.

Silicon Valley is the opposite. Too many single men, not enough women,
inevitably means a sucky online dating experience for guys (unless you're in
the very top attractiveness percentiles). I don't think any dating site can
fix that, unless it matches Silicon Valley men to New York women or something.

------
dkarl
_Here's what I'm getting at: if we were all more social about online dating,
it'd suck a lot less. A majority of problems go away with online dating sites
when you make it social._

Trying to make this sound cool by using the word "social" doesn't stop this
from being the classic awkward kid's lament: "If only people were
straightforward about mating and romance! If only there wasn't this forest of
doublespeak and taboos surrounding sex! If only people stopped being petty and
competitive and just openly admitted their desires and insecurities! We'd all
be so much better off (me especially.)"

~~~
benched
You've written the awkward kid character to sound enlightened.

~~~
dkarl
He is, in a useless kind of way. It's one thing to think this way and another
thing to propose that everyone voluntarily adopt social mores that put them at
a disadvantage relative to the people who continue to use the same old
stratagems. For something like that you need a social movement organized
around a moral cause, with constant moral vigilance against cheaters (who
would otherwise prosper, and might prosper even in spite of such vigilance.)
That's unlikely enough, but it gets worse. Skill at organizing and inspiring a
social movement is, by my guess at least, highly correlated with skill at
succeeding sexually under the current social conventions. The people who are
highly motivated to change current social mores around dating are exactly the
people who are least likely to inspire a following.

Take it from someone who wasted his first five years after puberty learning
the hard way :-|

~~~
mst
Being open and honest about my desires and insecurities has worked out very
well for me; the trick was learning to present it as confidence in who I am
rather than an apologia for what I am not. Attitude is often everything during
early stage interactions when you're both rapidly trying to size the other
person up.

Then again, my taste in partners' personalities probably selects for people
where that -will- work out well for me. Which for me is obviously a feature,
but means I in no way am suggesting that it would work well universally.

------
Brushfire
Brian from OkCupid Labs here...

This post contains some really interesting and spot on insights. Some of the
data doesn't line up with our (match + okcupid, etc) internal
estimates/figures. For example, our estimates are closer to 50% of US have
tried online dating, and 50% havent; significantly lower than that in other
geographies. The idea of serendipity is definitely a real issue, and a
frustrating one, because just the concept in people's minds and expectations
alone prevents them from trying solutions that might work for them.

The simple fact is that, for most people finding work is just like anything
else: it takes a little bit of attention and work to find the best person for
you. That's not romantic, but its real.

I'm not sold that the solution is having your friends help you create a
profile, introduce you to their friends, or attest for you. It seems like a
lot of work for them, to be honest, with very limited returns. At the labs,
our minds are focused on finding the future of dating in mobile, big data,
leveraging social networks, and discovering how to create serendipitous
connections through the above.

To the OP -- if you want to chat, hit me up; would love to chat. We're in
SoMa.

~~~
MasterScrat
> our minds are focused on finding the future of dating in mobile, big data,
> leveraging social networks, and discovering how to create serendipitous
> connections through the above.

You should make a "Netflix challenge" for online dating.

~~~
kmfrk
Please don't; the Netflix challenge was a a historically embarrassing privacy
catastrophe.

<http://33bits.org/2010/03/15/open-letter-to-netflix/>

------
dougk16
One theory on why the author might be having a little trouble with OkCupid
comes down to this sentence:

"Unless your parents are Jewish and they threaten to disown you for not having
a Jewish boyfriend...yea, you may not want to message me in that case."

I mean, I laughed, it's a funny profile, but ultimately it implies bitterness
over your last relationship, which, in my experience, is a turn off for both
sexes. Don't get me wrong, everyone's bitter after getting dumped, but your
next significant other doesn't want to know about it (at least not at first).
In fact, they don't want to know anything about your previous relationship,
good or bad, period.

EDIT: This actually adds some merit to his idea...his friends would be
objective and wouldn't make the same mistake.

I'll second the confusion over people thinking there's a stigma to online
dating. I thought that was a 90's thing.

~~~
mamoswined
OKCupid actually has a question that you could use to filter out non-Jewish
people or people who want to date only Jewish people. But unfortunately it
sounds like she decided it mattered only when the relationship was underway.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Religious differences can sometimes be a convenient excuse to end a
relationship, speaking from experience.

------
JulianMorrison
This is the core problem of a dating site:

1\. Forging connections between pairs of strangers where they will fall in
love,

2\. …under conditions of oppressive patriarchy.

Number 1 is a pretty easy numbers game. for each person, a subset of people
match them algorithmically. Another subset will be good matches. If your
algorithm doesn't suck, some of the first set overlaps the second.

Number 2 is the problem. If you are asking why women are being swamped with
textual street harassment such that the noise quite drowns the signal, why
women need pseudonymity and ignorable messaging and no-appeal blocklists, why
women get shamed for taking an active role in seeking a date (such as OKC) and
don't want to admit it, why Mills & Boon nonsense holds so much cultural sway,
and why social proof is the most effective way to get dates, the answer to all
of the above is patriarchy. Rapey, commoditizing attitudes to sex are
patriarchy. Passive, romance-movie, pedestal-putting, shaming, antisexual
attitudes to love are patriarchy.

~~~
jimzvz
I honestly cannot tell if you are being sarcastic with regards to "Number 2",
I hope you are.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Dead serious. Sarcasm set at 0.

------
dbecker
I think this may be solving a legitimate problem, but I think you are
incorrect that the source of the problem is hollywood.

Online dating follows historically from personals classifieds. Personals ads
contained very little information (in part because they had to be so short).
This meant you were going on a date with someone you knew nothing about. It
was worse than just a blind date... because you didn't even have any common
friends to validate the person wasn't a psycho. People (esp. women) who valued
their safety tended not to use personals ads, and there was a definite stigma
that people who did use it likely had problems.

Though online dating is popular now, I think it was previously viewed as the
high-tech version of printed personals ads. So the stigma carried over. It's
certainly decreased over time, but I think that history is part of the stigma.

Again, I think you have a potentially viable solution to a problem people care
about... even if I disagree on the source of them problem.

~~~
anigbrowl
Hollywood helped to normalize the idea of online dating with _Sleepless in
Seattle_ \- if it was good enough for tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, then sure, why
not? OP comes off as slightly unhinged and blaming the world for his failure
to find love.

~~~
Macsenour
Huh? The two characters met with Tom Hank's son called into a radio program.
How is that online dating?

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm sorry, I meant _You've got mail_. Both films star Hanks and Ryan.

~~~
gimeq
It's OK. Most Hanks/Ryan movies are the same story with different set
dressing.

------
curt
The problem with online dating boils down to: guys have no idea what they are
doing. I've helped my friends and the secret is to write a three sentence
message: an intro about why the message, a funny sentence, and finally a light
question. It's pretty simple.

I used it on OkCupid and got about a 30-50% response rate. Now I'm 6'8" and in
shape which skewed the results but my friends copied what I did and their
response rates skyrocketed. Then you only send 2-3 more messages before asking
her out for drinks. Worked nearly 100% of the time.

I think that it comes down to, people spend way too much time trying to write
the perfect message or profile. Be yourself. Think of it as a filter to get
rid of the girls that you aren't compatible with.

Then when you're on the date, relax and just have fun. I've heard so many
horror stories from my female friends of guys that are super awkward. The
group setting is a great idea as it relaxes people and gives them support.
That's why wingmen exist.

~~~
gimeq
Yeah, just be tall, good looking, confident, and comfortable conversing in
contrived situations like bar/cafe meetings with strangers.

Wonder why guys can't figure that out?

~~~
curt
you can teach yourself to be confident and comfortable around women. I used to
HORRIBLE back in the day.

~~~
cheald
Fake it 'til you make it. If you act like you know what you're doing for long
enough, that will actually end up building confidence.

------
msabalau
Good luck with the endeavour. Some thoughts:

Requiring 100+ Facebook "friends" to join may serve as decent "this is a real
person" filter for college educated urban 20 somethings, but you are likely
filtering out lots of potential customers older than 30, people who never left
their small town, etc. Is there a better way you can accomplish the same goal?

Also, I'm not sure that one can ascertain that "men don't read profiles" from
a study that 21 men in a coffee shop spent half the time looking at picture as
18 women similarly accosted by market researchers. That's a pretty thin read
to make a decision on. Have you a/b tested how profiles might work for your
users?

I'm wondering how the "I was looking on behalf of a friend, but stumbled
across someone really appealing." thing plays out.

Again, good luck.

------
seldo
I'm honestly really surprised to hear that anybody thinks there is still
stigma attached to online dating. I don't know what it's like for straight
people, but online dating definitely has zero stigma for gay folks. I mean,
compared to Grindr -- where all criteria for meeting somebody have been
reduced to "I don't want to have to walk more than a couple of blocks" --
online dating like OKCupid is staid and respectable.

~~~
gcb0
well, the stigma is that it outright tells me you don't have friends.

i never had to go out alone to find a significant other. Sure a few days i had
to stay home because none of my friends wanted to go out. but that's life.

... you will probably not meet, and be happy with, someone you meet in a dive
bar, or online dating. it's just common sense, or you may call it stigma.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I picked my girlfriend[1] of four years up at a bar. After a few dates, she
broke it off with a guy she'd been dating casually who she met through
Match.com.

[1] Ivy-educated, Ph.D.-holding, tenured professor girlfriend.

~~~
jonnybu
Do you not count that as her cheating on you?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
No, why would I? He and I both knew that she was going on dates with more than
one person. There's no scandal. In fact, I'd be a bit worried about immediate
overcommitment otherwise.

~~~
EvanKelly
I wouldn't worry about those comments (I'm sure you aren't). A lot of people
don't seem to make a firm distinction between dating and relationships.

The whole reason "becoming exclusive" is a thing/phrase, is because it's
acceptable and expected to "date" multiple people.

------
nhangen
I think the lie told is not one of predestined love, but of perfect love. That
you'll find the person of your dreams, they will sweep you off your feet, and
you'll never have a negative feeling about them. It will all end storybook.

Of course the next 20 chapters are ones of compromise, empathy, regret, and
apologies, with happiness and perfection in between.

~~~
p2w
ha! no shit. after almost two decades of marriage i laugh my ass off at this
online dating stuff. what a farce. it's a perfect metaphor for the shallow
cesspool our culture has become...

~~~
henrikschroder
So you've never actually used any online dating service the past 20 years, but
you still think you are qualified to dismiss it all as a farce?

I have several friends who met their significant others online, and are now
happily married with children. But you just laugh...?

~~~
p2w
i'm happy for your friends, but as a practical matter they are very likely
outliers in the statistical sense.

to put it in the perspective of this forum, all of my VC buddies put online
dating plays in the category of domain specific search. that's a fairly
sterile way to look at the process of finding a life partner, don't you think?

but beyond that, there is no credible statistical data, i.e. stats not
produced by the companies themselves and peer reviewed, that would indicate
these services produce anything like a non-niche impact on the occurrence of
marriage in the US.

there are however numerous more deliberate commentaries on the topic of
technology and its impact on the social fabric of culture. one of my personal
favs is "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle.

The more interesting question in all of this is why exactly online dating
functions are even viable. IMHO the fact that people, particularly in the
business we are in (i'm assuming you are in the software biz as well) spend so
much time chained to a desk that they cannot go out and actually interact
physically with other human beings is the point of my original response.

------
smoyer
My 25+ year marriage is actually the product of "predestined love" and I think
most people _could_ end up with a love like that. The reality is that you have
to keep your eyes open if you want to notice the person that's right for you
... and you have to meet enough people to find them.

EDIT:

As I thought a bit more about it, I also realized that you have to have some
criteria for what you're looking for in a partner too. How will you know if
you've found them? If all you can come up with is "a body like a swimsuit
model", you deserve what you get. Looks might be one criteria, but maybe you'd
be better off picking some other attributes to go with it? And perhaps
weighting things like interests, life-goals, etc a bit higher.

I'd also recommend understanding your Myers-Briggs type and the types that are
compatible (this is _not_ your sign). Then learn the attributes that make up
your compatible types and try to spot them in public.

~~~
groby_b
It's not "predestined love" alone - it's also willingness to actually _work_
on that relationship. I've got 23 years so far, and it's been awesome. But it
required talking about things, occasionally compromising, being willing to
listen, and paying attention to what's going on. And sometimes sticking it
out, even when you thought "This really isn't fun right now".

And congrats on 25+ years - you're obviously doing it right :)

------
peteforde
Recently single, I took the bait.

Funny story, though: everyone above the fold (eight women) is someone I've
either dated or wanted to. The first one? My best friend.

I am lucky my screen isn't any bigger though, because the next person on the
list is my sister.

------
neilk
Nice idea. I've been saying this forever - getting friends involved in
matching was the way forward for dating sites. But all glory to the person who
executes.

This also removes the stigma of being on the site - you're not there for you,
you're just there to help out your friend!

However I find it to be too creepy to sign up friends without their knowledge.
You're asking me to reveal personal information about them to a third party
site and an unknown audience of people. And there's a lot of potential for
abuse, if I want to embarass a "friend".

Even if I find someone I think they'd like, how am I supposed to explain that
I was pimping them out? I think there should be invitations first, like "hey,
I made a profile for you on CupidWithFriends, check it out." Or ideally, do it
with peer pressure, like "your 3 friends made this profile for you on CWF,
they want you to accept." Then if the profiled person like it, they click a
button to accept and only then does it go public.

EDIT: actually, what if you changed the focus to "stories about friends",
where dating was a sort of side effect? I think I'd feel less creepy if I felt
I was making a little tribute to a friend, rather than selling them.

This could work for any situation where you want to match people up. Even in
matching jobs to people. LinkedIn sort of does this, but they ask for super
boring testimonials like "implemented action items with diligence." Stories
are so much more interesting, and they are what really sells you on somebody
anyway.

------
jredwards
Relevant discussion of the perfect mate myth, in hilarious song form:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeZMIgheZro>

~~~
RyJones
I do wonder if he's still married to her.

~~~
jredwards
20 years, 2 kids.

------
Udo
Another question is, of course, if straight dating can be fixed at all. After
short stints on all the major dating websites, and of course trying to date in
the real world, I've come to believe that the basic expectations people have
can't really be satisfied, mostly by virtue of mathematics.

The following is a male perspective, but I think the observations should be on
par for the other side as well:

First, there is supply and demand. There are not a lot of available women
around (once you exclude the spam accounts), and that may very well be in
large part due to Hollywood expectations. There are, however, a lot of men.
That fact alone means that for most men, this won't work out at all. Once you
get past a certain age (say 30), this mirrors the situation of the physical
world _exactly_. At this point, it's a game of playing musical chairs that a
lot of us simply can't win. But it only gets worse.

While most of the female profiles portray fundamentally damaged people, the
men are overwhelmingly fit, handsome, and great in general. This could mean
that women are just more honest in filling out these profiles, but it could
also mean that women only join online dating sites _if they have absolutely no
other alternative left_ , whereas men _create profiles as a matter of course_.

So being me, I can't begin to compete with the other guys on attractiveness,
or money, or general awesomeness. Not only that, I'm so vastly outnumbered
it's not even funny. And the very limited resource we're competing on seems to
be mostly reluctant, frustrated women who hate being on the site in the first
place.

And in what I can only assume is a typical pattern, I meet exponentially more
women AFK than online. Now if it continually isn't working out in meatspace,
there is really no reason to assume it's going to be any different if the
introduction was through a website. If anything, online-induced meetups are
vastly more awkward. At least if you meet organically, it can always be in a
friendly non-committal social context. When you meet online dates, it _has to
be_ about dating.

I don't think this is fixable. I'm not sure _it should be_ fixable. There are
plenty of people who still profit from online dating, but it doesn't really
provide any discernable advantages for people who are already at a
disadvantage. The perception that there _must_ be someone out there for every
single one of us is also a Hollywood myth.

In fact the only reason I can conceive where online dating makes sense is for
attractive people who just don't get to meet a lot of potential partners in
their daily lives. Now, that's not a small market. It may even be the majority
of cases. But it took me a while to figure out that there is not a lot online
dating can do for you if you don't belong to that group.

Having friends make your advertising for you doesn't change these mechanics.
Of course it might improve the quality of the experience for the above-
mentioned privileged group, but at the end of the day I'll have exactly the
same odds as on any other dating site. To some degree, all dating sites (even
those genuinely interested in making online dating not suck) capitalize on the
Hollywood illusion that somewhere out there is my reasonably perfect match.
They're playing on the assumption that everyone is dateable, and they in fact
have to deceive you into thinking that the world of dating is not as
depressing as it actually is.

Online dating works well for people who are already likely to be successful at
dating AFK. For these people, online dating could probably be optimized. For
others, probably not.

~~~
crazygringo
It's funny... here in New York City, I hear people saying the exact opposite.
That guys are having a great time on a dating site, because there are tons of
attractive and interesting women, and all the single girls seem to create
profiles! And girls not having a lot of luck on a dating site, because a lot
of guys don't create profiles, and sometimes it seems like all the "good" ones
are taken.

However, this may also be a function of age -- I'm in my early thirties, as
are my friends. And of course, New York City.

I do think you're right about "online dating works well for people who are
already likely to be successful at dating" -- in my experience, whether it's
online or offline is irrelevant. Online dating isn't any fundamentally
different at all -- people are attracted to each other, or not. Online dating
just vastly widens the pool of potential people you might meet. You might see
100 people in a bar one night, and 90% are immediately out of your age/gender
range, leaving just 10. You could easily browse through 200 filtered
candidates on a dating site in an evening.

~~~
calinet6
Guys, seriously, spend a few years on the East coast. The girls are nice, down
to earth, educated, and plentiful. And the winters will make you tough.

~~~
egypturnash
I dunno, man. I just wish they all could be Calfornia girls.

~~~
calinet6
They are! Where do you think the smart California girls go to school? In
Boston.

------
jrockway
What's the incentive for my friends to do all this work for me for free? Why
would I bother setting up a profile for a friend? It seems like a lot of work
for no benefit.

The OkCupid profiles make more sense: you make them so that you look good and
you get dates. Work -> reward.

~~~
jerrya
The article was tl;dr for me, but is there a gamification angle?

Like can me and my buds set up a fantasy football league and see how our team
scores against other teams (or against women teams??)

Because gamification, social media, that's money in the bank right there.

~~~
jes5199
At first I thought this had to be a parody comment, but I think you're
actually for real. Amazing.

------
jiggy2011
I'd find it more than a little creepy if my friends were setting up a dating
profile for me without my consent.

------
safrolic
I remember times when online dating was not broken.

Times where it was not organized by a third party trying to make a profit out
of it.

It happened on IRC which was quite different: it happened in real time, it was
text based (no pictures until you had proven yourself worthy). Though it
already featured the too many messages towards women issue but it was easy
enough to put the offenders on ignore and as once disconnected there was no
way of messaging you they didn't pile up in your absence.

Online dating sucks but to me the main reason is that online dating is mostly
governed by businesses trying to build a profitable business model for them,
putting their own interest before those of the people using the service.

First comes the somewhat innovative idea, then the launch of the service with
the accompanying marketing in order to gather a comfortable bunch of profiles
and it's monetizing time in a stupid way usually by putting artificial
barriers effectively killing its usefulness. From there it is inertia for a
while, then the cycle starts again.

Hollywood may have some responsibility in shaping some people expectation of
love but I don't think this is much related to online dating being broken.
Actually I failed to find any link in your article which seemed to be a
shameless marketing attempt at driving more people to your dating profile
service, as is expected during the launch phase.

Then I would not touch anything facebook related with a 10 foot pole, let
alone a dating profiles website where facebook friends, a.k.a. not actual
friends, are in control without me knowing about it.

IANAL but I wonder about the legality of this, I'm not sure one is entitled to
fill an online profile for someone else, it may be considered a form of
identity theft.

------
yarou
I don't know where the author gets his statistics from, but I am skeptical
that 75% of the population in the US uses online dating. It often takes
decades for social and sexual mores to change (if you don't believe me, take a
look at the ample evidence from history). I suppose I fail to grasp the value
proposition of a service such as this, though it is certainly an interesting
experiment.

~~~
jmtame
<http://www.statisticbrain.com/online-dating-statistics/>

------
p6v53as
It has a flaw of requiring a person to have friends.

~~~
YokoZar
There's always mechanical turk.

------
lmm
100 "friends"? I've been on the facebook for seven years and I don't have that
many, because I only fried my actual, uh, friends.

~~~
jerrya
I fried my friends too :(

With some fava beans.

~~~
alenart
Don't forget the chianti.

------
groby_b
Wait, what? My friends might be setting up a profile for me without even
knowing it? I sure hope that's qualified by "if I'm signed up", because
otherwise I might need to engage in some rage.

~~~
derefr
They can already matchmake you without you knowing it offline; what's the
difference if it's online?

Presumably they wouldn't be allowed to use your real name or super-identifying
photos or anything, so this "dating persona" they set up from you is divorced
from the rest of your identity, and nobody will find it by looking for you.

~~~
safrolic
How would you disallow them to use your name or identifying pictures ?

Funny thing is IINM this is probably illegal in several countries around the
world, both setting up an online profile for someone else, without his/her
knowledge being aggravating, and not providing exact personal information.

If my friends did this to me, it would probably put a definitive end to that
friendship.

~~~
derefr
> How would you disallow them to use your name or identifying pictures ?

By making it against the TOS of the site, and banning profiles that do it.

> probably illegal ... not providing exact personal information.

Presumably it's a profile _about_ you, but it's not a profile _impersonating_
you. They don't sign up using your name/birthdate/et al; they have their own
account, which they use to fill in the details of your profile.

To be clearer: the concept isn't _really_ that you're filling out someone
else's profile. Instead, it's more like (exactly like) a "review" site--
friends giving "product reviews" of friends, talking about how you should
"buy" this friend or that. They just _appear_ without attribution,
conglomerated into a "consensus profile" of "what others think about this
person." I imagine it's very clear that the person themselves didn't make the
profile, any more than hockeyfan3392 on Amazon made the Macbook his review is
attached to.

------
youcefnb
So what happens if you don't have a lot of friends, or in my case, if all your
friends are engaged or married and have no reason to be on a dating site?

I think what happens is, this model falls flat on its face. It's a good idea
though, for a group of single friends.

------
laxk
Sign Up is broken.

<http://www.cupidwithfriends.com/sorry> : Firefox has detected that the server
is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

The same issue with Chrome: The webpage at
<http://www.cupidwithfriends.com/sorry> has resulted in too many redirects.
Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix
the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a
problem with your computer.

I've tried to sign up under different fb accounts.

~~~
jmtame
Do you have >50 Facebook friends when you try to join?

------
malandrew
You're completely right, people are lazy, but online dating is also way more
work than it has to be.

Women receive so many messages that it becomes overwhelming and too much work
and men try sending earnest messages for a little while and then concede that
it's basically a numbers game. These two phenomena are self-reinforcing. The
more messages women receive, the less likely they are to respond. The more
messages a man doesn't get a response to the more likely they are to put less
effort into their messages. If you solve this problem, you effectively solve
attrition rate in dating sites.

If you look at an old inbox full of sent of received messages for a man versus
a women, you'll notice something interesting. The woman's inbox will be full
of avatars next to almost all the messages. Men don't delete or suspend
accounts. Now if you look at the inbox of the men on the other hand you'll
notice that more and more of the messages have the default avatar next to the
name as you move back in time in the inbox. This is because many women become
totally overwhelmed by the number of messages, the quantity of them that are
vulgar, etc.

I've talked to a bunch of people about this (because I'm one of those few
people that has no problem talking about online dating because like you I
think it is the future) and the conclusion I've come to that many people agree
with is that online dating needs the equivalent of the spam button in many
email inboxes. However instead of saying the words "Mark as spam", there
should be two buttons, one that says "Mark as did not read my profile" and one
that says "Flag as vulgar or offensive". The first button is to be used every
time a women (or a man) receives a message where someone sends a one line
message with no content specific to the recipient or any message which is
obviously cookie cutter (cut & paste job)[0] and the second should be used
whenever the sender is overtly sexual or mean.

Every time these buttons are used it should impact a score on both the sender
and the recipient. For the sender, they're "doesn't read profiles" score
should go up and for the recipient that used the button, their "cares that
senders don't read and consider their profile" score should go up. The same
goes for vulgarity/offensive content. The balance of these two numbers should
determine if the message makes it through to the recipients email inboxes at
all in the future. You could even warn senders when their score starts getting
too bad, like "This message will not be delivered to this user because you've
been flagged as someone who doesn't consider the content of user's profiles
when crafting a message" or "This user only receives messages from people who
take time to craft a personal message". If the sender then goes back and
significantly modifies their message before sending again (verified via a text
diff and possibly the passage of time), then send it through. This time
however, if that message gets flagged by the recipient, then it counts very
negatively towards their score.

If you use an approach like this you should be able to keep the inboxes of
females (and desirable males) with a high signal to noise ratio. This will
greatly improve their experience and lead them to respond to more messages and
not get so fed up with the bullshit messages that they either quit responding
or quit the site entirely.

[0] The only counterpoint to this are messages that achieve the Forer
Effect[1]. One of my friends has crafted some particularly generic messages
(his own admission) that presses all the right buttons just like horoscopes
texts do and he gets a pretty solid response rate despite the fact that those
messages are just cut and pasted. He's even frustrated that his well thought
out personal messages often perform worse than his generic ones that play to a
recipients own positive self image. TBH, I'd like to take Forer's original
text, and modify it for OkCupid to see how it performs. Besides crafting the
message, I'd need to figure out how to produce an acceptably generic profile
that still conveys enough authority for the recipient to think the fake
profile has the authority to make those statements/judgements.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect>

~~~
com2kid
The solution is even easier. There is no need to have messages individually
marked, the system knows what is being sent and can handle it automatically.

Auto detect spam messages. If a guy keeps sending out the same copy and paste,
after 2 or 3 sends, just forward future copies to /dev/null.

Now this has to be personalized! If a women responds to those types of
messages above some certain threshold, then hey, let her receive them, no
problem.

~~~
epsylon
I was thinking of adapting xkcd's robot9000 to dating sites on the other day.
Instead of searching duplicate messages from 1 user, you search for duplicates
across the entire database, with exponentially increasing ban periods if your
message is not original. It would definitely force men and women to write
meaningful messages.

~~~
finnw
I guess I will have to introduce random spelling errors into my messages then.

~~~
com2kid
Spam filters can already detect this. :) Sorry!

------
haberman
I always love this article about what it's like to be a woman on an online
dating site: <http://www.esquire.com/features/hotwoman0507>

------
benaston
My experience is mainly with OKCupid. I presume most other dating websites are
variations on the same theme.

The problem is that OKCupid is a geek's worldview distilled. Whether a girl is
visible to you is largely based upon algorithmic analysis of a questionnaire,
which in turn is based on nothing more than pseudoscience.

So you have a questionnaire written by a team of computer programmers acting
as gatekeeper to you contacting someone? Do you see the potential problem
here? Who says the questionnaire is relevant?

Add to this fact that the quality of women on these sites is low on average,
and it doesn't bode well for guys. Lots of guys will of course chime in and
say it works for them. My interpretation of this is that given the sheer
number of users, there will always be people who "luck out".

Cupid Plc (another online dating company, unrelated to OKCupid) is under heavy
suspicion in the UK for faking high quality female profiles. I don't know if
OKCupid does this, but the site really has no built-in mechanism to give you
much trust in the profiles you see.

Overall, I think the problem with online dating websites is that they are not
actually solving any of the difficult problems of dating. Online profiles are
useless because they are 90% equivalent. Oh, so you like tall, athletic men?
And you enjoy movies and wine, music, art and watching Game of Thrones? You
are mainly good, but have a wild side? You are unique?

Given this, why the focus on these profiles? Guys are only interested in the
photos (having put the effort into reading through fifty identikit profiles
already).

...and then there's the transition to meeting up. This is fraught with
difficulty because you have know way of gauging how to approach the issue. For
some people "let's meet" will be enough and looked upon positively as decisive
and confident. For others it is seen as completely inappropriate. The site
gives you, the guy - it will usually be the guy - no way of knowing which
strategy to use and so you lose 50% (or more) of the time on the basis of not
having enough information to make a good decision. Given already low
probability of finding someone who "suits" you on these sites, this is
incredibly wasteful and not addressed.

So... good luck to anyone trying to improve things.

------
jes5199
This post is very, very strange.

~~~
pjscott
I didn't find it strange; the fact that you do is surprising, and therefore
potentially interesting. Would you care to elaborate?

~~~
jes5199
It covers a lot of subject matter, and all of it seems to be from ways of
interacting with the world that are alien to me. Public complaining about your
ex? Pick up artistry? Inteviewing cliques of women in bars? Bizzare
charactures of the idea of romance? Weird superiority/inferiority posturing?
Trying to reduce a first impression to one-liners?

It feels more like cable television than real life.

~~~
mnicole
The one-liners thing really put me off too. I couldn't tell if they were being
sarcastic. Works 10% of the time because 10% have a bar low enough for empty
flattery? A friend of mine dated one of the more prolific figures in that
realm (don't know his name, it was just a big deal among the group) and she
said he was ultimately just making money off of his Narcissistic Personality
Disorder and she never wanted to see the guy again.

I think a lot of people on dating sites are going about it the wrong way and
making themselves feel worse in the process when they don't have to.

Find a forum or a chatroom about topics that interest you or that you want to
know more about (for your benefit, in communities where the gender of your
choosing makes up to 30-70% of the userbase). Get invested in the topic, meet
people, learn some stuff and see if any connections arise. You meet people in
the real world in situations that you have in common, and that's how finding
relationships online should be too. Some people may want the instant-
gratification of going out to a bar to meet this person or maybe they're just
gunning for a one-night-stand, which is fine too. But if my friends are
anything to base things off of, distance is no longer an issue for people
looking for serious, long-term relationships. I've seen lots of people fly
over oceans to be together, many end up staying that way.

------
Avshalom
Wait isn't this selling the same lie?

~~~
cheald
The Hollywood angle was a weak lead-in for the post, IMO, but I like the idea.
Getting your friends to talk you up has some interesting potential.

That said, it will of course be gamed and manipulated and still have many of
the problems of current online dating models, but that's just the nature of
marketing; when there are a lot of products out there, the way to sell yours
is to make it stand out, and a site that imposes a handicap just gives the
cheaters an advantage.

~~~
Avshalom
Yeah the idea is... no worse than any other dating site I guess but the pitch
here is absolutely "stop _looking_ for love. Join our site and love will
_happen_ to you" it's just it's supposed "happen to you" because ¡friends!
instead of lazy scriptwriters.

~~~
illuminate
The difference here is that you're objectively more likely to find it by
seeking, rather than passively waiting for it to happen to you.

------
jarjoura
I can't help but comment on my experience here. While I do sense the stigma to
online dating, I don't personally care. My best interpretation of it though is
that it's hard work going out and meeting people. So online dating attempts to
make it easier by pre-screening potential candidates. Hearing your friend met
someone online makes them sound lazy I guess right?

I've tried online dating but it never works out for me. People put their best
face forward online, but are quite different in real life.

Honestly, regardless of Hollywood, the best relationships I've been in have
come from friends introducing us at events or just randomly meeting at a bar.

------
sstarr
There's a site similar to this in the UK called My Single Friend which you
might be interested in looking at: <http://www.mysinglefriend.com/>

------
rdl
OKC is pretty predictive, due to quality questions such as: "STALE is to STEAL
as 89475 is to..."

The depressing thing is jt2005 got it wrong :( It's the single most predictive
question I've found on OKC.

------
tarikjn
Hey @joshmattvander, I started Mojo in 2009, (<http://staging.mojo.co>). I
agree with many of the points you make in your post. I am now working with
groceries self-checkout space but dating remain something that I am now very
passionate to solve. Perhaps we could share some insight, shoot me an email
my_username@gmail.com.

------
krmmalik
Have to say while reddit for me has been great for most things, /r/startups is
pretty bad. I can relate to the author's frustration

------
guard-of-terra
It's interesting that I've never seriously encountered "you have zero control
over who you end up with in life, and any attempt you make at dating is
futile" in the wild where I live.

Online dating is still shunned upon, but for the opposite reason that you're
not working hard enough on finding your match if you're "just" tapping buttons
in the internet.

------
erikj54
"That might be partially true, but that's like deciding not to swing for fear
of getting a strike."

Hmm, not quite. It is more like not trying to swing for the fence, and trying
to hit a double or single. Every once and a while you connect right in the
"sweet spot" and the ball flys over the fence.

------
cbhl
The on-boarding flow needs some work -- I got a "FBCDN image is not allowed in
stream" error in both the ask friends to comment and share with <friend> pop-
ups.

<http://imgur.com/J1isKcl>

~~~
jmtame
Thanks, just fixed this

------
cnbeuiwx
Good idea for a site but there is no way Im signing up on Facebook. :)

------
throwawayG9
What's up with that Cetaphil and the tissues? Was that on purpose?

------
alenart
This lie is OK, so long as this startup takes off. Right?

The stigma of online dating is such rubbish. I am as much of a stranger as the
guy on the barstool next to you.

------
volandovengo
Fantastic post. Thanks for the great breakdown :)

------
athiercelin
"Put your money where your mouth is" Paying online dating will always have
better results because of this.

Also you take under consideration almost exclusively OkCupid.

OkCupid != Online Dating.

Because of how it works, OkCupid is full of needy girls (and starving guys).

They go there, put three pics, play the dumb-ass matching game (understand
answer 30 questions) and then enjoy receiving 4000 messages the first day.
Deep down, they feel "woa I'm that good!" and they wine about guys being lame
(and their pick up lines).

But here is the cold truth (from what I saw in the silicon valley) 1/ most
girls are gold diggers OR what-have-you-done-for-me-lately (Eddie Murphy-
style) - including your ex. 2/ most guys just want to hook up.

You can't sort this out with friends or anything. Even if people have a
tendency to protect themselves from bad-people by closing their circles that
is a negative reflex when trying to do online dating.

And online dating, especially when free, is the perfect fuckable-meat-
supermarket. (excuse my french, I am... French) So you can come up with any
pickup line, as long as the quality stays the same, it's the looks that
matters. With the few exceptions based on luck OR coincidences.

This is also why a lot of people have a negative image of online-dating. There
is of course the geeky-desperate, you're-not-capable-otherwise image.

For at least some time, people will still have this image. If you try to
educate the world about online-dating, you're screwed. You should try to kick
ass at your website, and make it feel like it's _not_ online dating. Take
distance from this image.

And it won't work if it is free or if you try to involve friends. It will work
by solving the question: "how to raise the quality of the members commitment
to the idea".

I think good leads could be: 1/ pure and guaranteed balance in girls/guys (for
straight websites) - It can be extremely repulsive. 2/ remove un-active
accounts. 3/ Push people to open themselves - more privacy, different layers,
many technical ways. 4/ force them out of the website. (you provide the first
contact, but try setting up the date, suggestions is a great step already) 5/
limited amount of members (increased by periods, without some elitist bs)

The issue is, it's all about quantity not quality. The big problem I foresee
is that might go against a juicy business plan - at least at first, and
definitely when raising money. (better have 200M people poking each-others
virtual a-holes than 10k people doing something and paying for it).

As for Hollywood's lie, it's always the same bitching. Hollywood's lie is only
as valuable as the number of people who believes it. The truth is, people want
to believe in Hollywood-dreamy-love but they tend to take everything too
seriously to actually catch it. But hopefully, they will one day get tired of
it and get down to earth.

Good luck in your adventure.

------
seivan
Two years and counting. I hope it lasts :)

------
BigBalli
did you hear about mycutefriend.com? it was recently "unveiled" at Launch2013.

------
itistoday2
How about you lie to us too buddy?

    
    
      The problem is men don't read online dating profiles,
      they only look at the pictures. It's not just a difficult
      and repetitive task, but it's wasted time.
    

I am a man, and I read every word of ~90% of the profiles I'm interested in
enough to visit, and 100% of the profiles I send a message to. So what does
that say about your statement? The study you linked to didn't even use OKC, it
used two other sites that are structurally very different.

I really like OKC. I thought it was way better than any other dating site I
looked at. I also found a wonderful woman on it whom I love dearly and who
loves me, so I'm perfectly happy.

From your post, it sounds to me like you have a rather narrow viewpoint of
what people think about online dating. There are many points of view, and if
you want to focus on a niche of people who believe what you believe, that's
perfectly fine. But don't go making objective statements like "men don't read
online dating profiles" when that's simply not true. "A study that used X
number of men and Y number women, looked at eHarmony and match.com and found
that ... blah blah blah" is way better and way closer to the truth.

(I'm not a shill for OKC btw, I don't work for them, or know anyone who works
for them. I'm just really really happy with their site and the results.)

~~~
SilentStump
More like use a generality than lie. I know, while I read some profiles, I
don't read any until I am physically attracted to the person.

~~~
itistoday2
If he knew he was making a generality (and, for his sake, I hope so), and yet
still made that statement, then that's lying (at least, using boolean, and not
fuzzy logic) because his statement was absolute and unqualified. Absolute,
unqualified statements are not generalities.

"People are dumb" (absolute, unqualified) vs "Most people are dumb" (absolute,
qualified) vs "Most people I've met are dumb" (relative, qualified).

A comment like "people are dumb" is usually assumed not to be taken literally,
but when you quote a study and say something like "men don't read online
dating profiles", you're now in a very different territory, and the misuse of
language could give the impression of a deliberate false statement (i.e., a
lie).

~~~
SilentStump
You do make a good argument. When I read blog posts and they make a statement
like that I tend to just read it as "Most X do Y" instead of "All X do Y."
It's like the word literally. Everyone that uses the word literally use it
instead of figuratively, even though they mean the latter (jokes I make are
bad).

------
transitionality
I can't imagine that anyone's friends are as invested as they themselves are
(or would put an equivalent amount of energy) in their dating success, but
maybe I just have lousy friends. It's an experiment worth conducting.

------
edwardunknown
I don't know how you figured "most of us use it". Most of us have probably
created a dummy account and quickly said "to hell with this." I won't go near
those things, not because of "predestined love" but because 90% of the girls
on there aren't attractive and the ones who are I assume are screwed up in
some way. And if it makes you uncomfortable reading something so cold and
dismissive as what I just said it's just as uncomfortable thinking it, so to
hell with it.

I can go up to the bar, have a beer, see a live band, talk to a pretty girl
and know in 30 seconds if I like her and if she thinks I'm grotesque. Mother
Nature is very efficient. No need to over-complicate things.

------
p2w
here's a novel idea dude. go interact with real people. in person.

~~~
longlegs636
I'm in my 50s. Online dating is the ONLY way I'll meet eligible men. And trust
me, the pool of eligible men is much smaller than when you're young. That
said, the innovation I'd most like to see is crowdsourcing of the online
dater's social signals. Not only would that prove they're real humans, but
what better way to capture who they really are personally.

------
niuzeta
Well... the destined love trope came from a lot heavier, and older forms of
literature than Hollywood. It's just one of the things that people have
fantasized, experienced, and encouraged for ages.

Really, the article didn't convince me a bit. The stigma comes because the
idea is quite distinct from what we've all been doing for several thousand
years...

~~~
illuminate
"the idea is quite distinct from what we've all been doing for several
thousand years..."

Lonely hearts adverts are hardly new, though.

