
Why Online Dating Sucks for Men (2013) - pmoriarty
http://www.alternet.org/why-online-dating-sucks-men
======
paulcole
I'm a man and in my late 20's (currently mid-30's and been with my partner for
a few years now) had a great time using OKCupid. I was able to average 2-3
dates per week and received replies to ~25% of my messages.

Before anyone asks, I am average appearance. I don't drive (bicycle only).
Things I had going in my favor: I'm white, had a flexible job (could meet
whenever) and vegan diet (probably the biggest help as vegan women way
outnumber vegan men even here in Portland).

Here are my tips for men seeking women:

1\. Say as little as possible in your profile.

2\. Spend as close to no time as possible on the messages you send. Should be
3-5 sentences max and end in a relevant question that the recipient can
answer.

3\. If you get a response, don't waste time with back and forth. Immediately
ask to meet for coffee.

4\. Ask questions and listen. When someone tells a story, don't immediately
tell one that's similar-- ask a question.

5\. Open your age range to include women who are older than you are (try as
much as a decade, not just 1-2 years).

~~~
pmoriarty
This probably works if you're an average guy looking for an average woman. In
that that case, you are most likely to be compatible.

It doesn't work so well if your interests, tastes, or personality are off the
beaten track, however.

I have a lot of unusual interests and prefer to find women who share them. So
my success rate at just randomly rolling the dice and having women just
randomly roll the dice in return (such as with short profiles or speed dating)
has been pretty low.

What has worked reasonably well for me has been having really detailed
profiles. That way women really know what they're getting when they contact
me, and I they're likely to be women who self-select to be relatively
compatible with me by the time they reach out -- though there's always the
chance that we just won't have much chemistry when we meet in person, and that
tends to happen more often than not (though not as often as when I meet random
women at bars, clubs, work, or wherever).

I've also never posted pictures of myself (though I have sent them upon
request). That, along with my interests, helps to select women for whom looks
aren't critically important, which is important for me (despite being above
average in appearance myself.. I just don't want to be sought after primarily
for my looks).

Another thing that's helped enormously is to find some way that immediately
sets you apart from the crowd. My profiles/personals effectively scream
"freak!" and that attracts freaks in return -- which is exactly what I want.
That can be a huge turn off for the normals, but an attraction for people who
share my tastes.

Not to get too philosophical, but I think it's important to somehow signal to
others that you are like them. That's why dress codes for subcultures are
still so important. They're systems of signaling that you share common tastes,
world outlooks, interests. The same has to be done on dating sites, whether
you do that through a pic of your biker tats or punk haircut, or (as in my
case) by just detailing your interests.

Personality is, of course, also important, and that can come through your
writing (or pics). I still have to work on that.. maybe take a creative
writing course. My profiles are definitely way too dry.

~~~
projektir
I'm a woman and felt similar reading that response. I'd never pay much
attention to a guy if he has nothing on his profile because, as you said, the
interests and such are too far off the beaten track. It definitely works for a
wide range of people, but really doesn't for a certain subset.

I wonder how a dating service focused on detailed profiles, later meeting, and
customizable search range would do...

~~~
greenhatman
I think that's what OKCupid is focussed on and good at.

~~~
projektir
I recall OKCupid could ban you if you didn't provide a picture.

~~~
pmoriarty
Do they actually check to see if it's actually a person of you? Or could you
provide, say, a picture of a fluffy bunny?

~~~
Lazare
If it's flagged, actual people will review the primary profile picture and
decide whether they believe it is a picture of the account holder that meets
their (quite reasonable) guidelines. Jokes, nudity, too close, too far away,
obvious fakes, etc. will get your account locked.

So no, a picture of your pet rabbit will NOT work as a primary profile
picture.

------
Lazare
Eh, sure, I guess, kinda? However, the article presents the situation as
being: 1) very positive for women and 2) very negative for men. In reality,
neither is entirely true.

As many, many women will tell you, the unrelenting torrent of creepy messages
and dick picks is by no means an unmitigated positive. Yes, you can just open
your inbox and find it full, but mostly it's full of utter crap, which
actively drowns out the actual good messages. The article glosses over this;
just ignore the "addled idiots" and exchange an email with the good guys. For
many women it's more a case of "find inbox 100% full of unsolicited pictures
of genitals; close it and go watch Netflix alone".

Similarly, as many guys can attest (including me, and other guys in the
comments here), not being massaged out of the blue is survivable (it's no
different than real life, and I'm somehow survived the experience of never
being accosted on the street and asked out on a date...), and response rates
are not that low if you're smart about it. People talk about 50 messages to
get a reply; my experience is more like 10 to get a date (and no, I'm not
conventionally attractive).

In short, I'd say online dating sucks for everyone, in different ways, but
it's not that bad for anyone. "Soul crushing"? Hardly. And if all of your
messages are being ignored, maybe it says something about your messages.

(The real trick, I think, is empathy. Think about the person you're messaging.
They have an inbox full of terrible messages. What can you write that will
stand out? How can you make the reply interesting? What do they want to see?
They have too many messages; they're looking for a reason to filter your out;
what do you need to avoid saying? Your goal is to get them to read the
message, then click on your profile, then reply to your message. It's not that
hard a problem!)

~~~
Touche
Also the article makes some assumptions on what is a positive experience,
based on her own feelings. Actually, having a brief exchange with someone you
are attracted to that then fizzles out is not the worst thing in the world. It
means they saw your profile and didn't think you were undateable. I'd take
1/10 for that amount of positive-reinforcement.

And the rejections don't hurt that much. As a man rejection from women is a
part of life. To be rejected by a lack of response is about the best rejection
I can think of. I mean, I still have vivid memories of being rejected by girls
in high school and can't remember a single profile from a woman who didn't
respond to me.

------
Forge36
I'm not sure where to take this discussion, on one hand I've went through the
process an I'm engaged to a woman I met through online dating. On the other I
remember how tiring it was trying to get responses and make a decent opening.

I spoke with my fiance about this she and she showed me how many messages are
got. While a guy may get a few replies. She had so many new messages mine had
dropped off the page. Message management was a paid feature, but sending was
free as was searching and filtering.

If anything: Perhaps the problems with online dating aren't simply skewed
ratios, but poor design with regards to how users used the Software vs
expectations.

Why should a woman search through profiles when she can review 20+ already
interested candidates in a day? Why should she reply to every message (I
assume the average guy doesn't message every girl)?

~~~
onion2k
_Why should a woman search through profiles when she can review 20+ already
interested candidates in a day?_

I don't think you can equate a man sending a message with genuine interest in
many cases. At the very least women on dating sites have to filter out the
guys who cut and paste the same message to every woman. Even if that's only 1%
of guys, that's still a lot of messages to read and reject.

------
autokad
when i was young, my female friends would say just be yourself, happy, etc and
someone will just come along. i did that, failed, and i said why did it go so
wrong? then i considered their world view, and i face palmed myself.

same thing happens, women say try online dating, its so easy! my response rate
(let alone something that leads to a rl meeting) is about 1/50\. not worth it.

i wonder if online dating will become so bad for men, that it will be bad for
women too, as the quality men realize its not a favorable arena.

~~~
superioritycplx
Don't ask fish how to fish.

Check out theredpill on reddit and never look back.

~~~
mtreis86
Please dont. That subreddit is gross. Its like asking sociopaths how to make
friends. The answer may make sense on some level, but to follow their advice
is to discount a large range of human emotions. The red pill is the last place
to go for real advice. Talk to your grandparents. Talk to women themelves.
Listen. Ask questions. Stop trying to manipulate people.

------
russellbeattie
Someone needs to combine Vine with Tinder. A 2 second video of you saying
hello, and you can only record via the app. This wouldn't change the general
imbalance of dating, but it would help narrow down choices really quickly and
maybe clear the backlog for women a bit.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Serious question: how do you solve the "oh, that's a penis" problem?

~~~
taneq
Deep learning with a crowdsourced dataset based on 'report penis' button
(cross-referenced across a bunch of accounts and filtered to remove false
positives from people who click 'that's a penis' on every profile out of
spite.)

------
evincarofautumn
Male here. I did online dating for a couple of years. Based on my narrow
experience, it seems the odds are indeed dramatically stacked against men—I
ended up generally not expecting a response from anyone.

When I changed my profile to “bisexual” (which I am), I saw one reason
why—scads of creepy, low-effort messages from men, sometimes with their
profile set to “female” to attract more responses. The imbalance leads to
slimy game tactics and drives down the quality of experience for everybody.

The only _real_ women who ever messaged me first had qualities that I guess
some people consider dealbreakers, such as being big, disabled, trans, non-
white, or just not “conventionally pretty”. Curiously, for me and most of my
male friends, none of those things would even be a problem, as long as there
were basic chemistry and lifestyle compatibility.

In the end, I made a few good friends, and I think that’s actually a very good
use case—OkCupid’s “match percentage” for example is a pretty good metric of
how much you agree on basic politics, demeanour, and so on. It just falls
short of predicting a “spark” in real life—I went on dates with “99% match”
women who turned out to share many of what I consider my _worst_ qualities.

Ironically, soon after I gave up on online dating, I met my lovely partner at
an internet meetup—so you really never know!

~~~
ThrustVectoring
OKCupid's match percentage is highly gameable. You've got two kinds of people
- those that might work out, and the "oh hell no". Answer anything that has an
obvious answer for the first kind as highly important, decline to answer
questions with high variance, repeat until enough people have high enough
percentages.

------
ThrustVectoring
Reading up on market design made me realize:

A) Tinder et al should probably be some sort of "sort the people you're
interested in and run Gale-Shapley to figure out who you're meeting with on
Friday Night"

B) The actual design of the app hardly matters for success, only your ability
to market it and get people to adopt it. Oh, and I don't have any advantage
here, so the entire thing is a mess not worth fixing.

I miiight have an out by making the Gale-Shapley version of Tinder, writing a
bunch of content marketing aimed at programmers/nerds, aggressively promoting
it at meetups. That only really gets the male side of the matching market,
which means I'd want funding and a marketing position for women-who-are-into-
nerds.

------
inlined
I don't understand some of this advice like "keep your profile short. You'll
offend someone and miss out on a date."

Unless you're just looking for hookups, the goal isn't dating, it's long term
matching. I probably have gone on dates with 1 in 20 matches and aside from my
ego, I'd be better off being more selective.

------
donatj
I was on OKCupid for something like 10 years. 5 years ago a girl messaged me
first. Probably the 3rd time that happened in the ten years. I am now happily
married to that girl. She's on the couch a few feet from me.

------
charles-salvia
How is this different from the default state of Western culture for the past
century? Despite many positive social changes towards more equal opportunities
for women, socially speaking, Western culture is still very traditional in
terms of the common expectations surrounding the "courtship" dynamic between a
man and a woman. The man is still expected to initiate and drive the
interaction, while the woman is expected to be more passive about it. This is
how it is off the Internet as well - women are routinely approached by men at
bars/nightclubs etc., but it rarely happens the other way around. So why would
online dating be any different?

~~~
caf
_How is this different from the default state of Western culture for the past
century?_

It's not, but the author is considering how her actions have hitherto been
perpetuating this state.

------
epx
I found my wife in a chat that was mostly used for dating. I won her because I
was the only guy in the virtual room that did not start the conversation in
the line "nice shoes, wanna fuck?".

Yes, online dating may be a bad experience for average-looking guys, but
sometimes it is so easy to stand out.

------
toodlebunions
It's a total sausage fest, your competition is extreme, and the quality of
possible mates is usually very low. Avoid if at all possible.

Find something offline and social instead, do that and meet likeminded people.
You will almost certainly have better luck.

------
Judgmentality
I haven't read the article, but around 5 years ago I had a great experience
with OkCupid. I've never had trouble meeting girls in real life though, and I
guess that carried over to the internet. I almost never initiated the
conversation with girls but just responded when they sent me a message. I met
lots of terrific women (and some not-so-terrific women), including my
girlfriend who I'm still with. I had a lot more fun meeting girls with OkCupid
than I did at bars/parties/etc.

------
ilaksh
The short version is that there are significantly more men than women and the
women receive many messages, so they can just pick the best looking/most
wealthy/stable-seeming men to reply to and almost have to ignore the rest as
spam.

The problem for me has been that most years I haven't made a lot of money and
I am somewhat unattractive. There are some issues with facial asymmetry that I
was actually unaware of until recently -- and the funny thing is that when I
went on a dating forums site and asked about it, they were quite rude in
dismissing my concern, suggesting I was average or above average.

But after years of real-life attempts and online messaging never receiving
replies from attractive women and rarely receiving replies at all, I have
slowly realized over the years that I am a little bit ugly, and not having the
good solid job or good height, means that attractive women do not have time
for me. Which makes sense for them, its just hard for me to deal with since
just because one is unattractive does not mean that they are attracted to
_other_ unattractive people. I am attracted to attractive women and repelled
by unattractive women. Which the same is probably happening the other way too.

So I have stopped trying to meet women and my new plan is to become
independently wealthy and improve my face with surgery.

~~~
vecter
> and the funny thing is that when I went on a dating forums site and asked
> about it, they were quite rude in dismissing my concern, suggesting I was
> average or above average.

I think you should open your mind and understand why they think or believe
that. If you do, you'll probably save yourself an incredible amount of pain,
suffering, and frustration.

~~~
ilaksh
I wanted to believe them and acted on those assertions, but after another 4 or
5 years of the same situation and then finally doing some analysis of my face
in photos, I realized they were wrong. So after about 3 decades of believing I
was normal and either having relationships only occasionally with very few
unattractive women or none (almost entirely alone), I now have accepted an
explanation.

------
reggieband
I definitely fall in the less than average response rate category. Probably
closer to 30/1 for a message response and worse for getting a date.

30 well crafted messages takes a lot of effort. The women that respond to me
and progress towards a date are usually the ones that I am least interested
in. In cold terms, the effort to result ratio makes online dating practically
useless for me.

I don't blame the women as I expect that the ones I would most like to date
get a lot of messages. The ones that are willing to progress with me I expect
get less, to put it politely. At a certain point I make the cut and I just
don't like that point.

I suggest everyone reading the advice of people here that says "Here's how I
get ~25% of my messages read and end up with 2-3 dates per week" ignore the
well-meaning advice and instead read Malcom Gladwell's article "The New-Boy
Network" [0]. What applies to jobs in the essay applies to women in online
dating.

[0] [http://gladwell.com/the-new-boy-network/](http://gladwell.com/the-new-
boy-network/)

------
ENTP
Happily married to a girl I met on a dating site. It​'s not always futile but
acknowledge I'm probably the 1%

------
szatkus
I met my GF on Adopt a Guy (I think it operates in few european countries).
Women have to start conversations so SNR there is slightly higher than on
traditional dating sites.

------
known
Relevant
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867590)

------
bananarama2000
Top 5% of men crush it online.

Better start lifting more weights boys! (and girls!)

 _speaking as someone who is crushing it (100 dates in past year alone)_

It would be impolite to say anything more than that

------
sergiotapia
In a single picture:
[http://i.imgur.com/G9sr4Cl.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/G9sr4Cl.jpg)

------
dbg31415
I don't really agree with this article.

I gave up on online dating a few years back, but as a guy I don't think it was
all that bad. Someone said 1/50... I think it was closer to 1/5 women would
respond. And look... if they don't respond, that's fine... it's nothing
personal at that point. Women have to sift through the messages very quickly.

Anyway my advice for making it not suck so much for guys:

1) Find a girl friend who has some style, have her pick out your clothes (you
can have her go through your closet and throw out everything that sucks if you
want -- every 5 years or so it's probably not a bad idea to let a woman do
this for you). I'm not the best looking guy... compensating by dressing right
helps.

2) Make sure your pics aren't shirtless selfies, or drunk frat-boy poses, or
just you standing in front of a boring ass wall; photos where you are out
doing interesting things... hiking, at a cooking class... whatever. No
selfies. Outdoor pics in good lighting taken by someone else. Make sure your
pics are current.

3) Put some time into your profile, but make sure it's not a wall of text. A
few tweet-like sentences that are funny or summarize yourself... that's what
you need to go for. I think you want to be a more-fun version of yourself. Be
a little goofy, don't take yourself too seriously. And be honest... you'll get
what you're looking for.

4) When you write to girls... actually write to them. Not a book... but
something individual. Copy and pasting the same message won't get you
anywhere. Tweet-like comments about something on her profile... ask her a
question, share a funny story... Avoid diving right into compliments. Give her
something to respond to, something to play off of.

5) When you go out to dinner, have her pay half the first date. It's not
cheap, it's fair. And you own't feel taken advantage of. Be friendly, be
courteous, but don't be some white knight waiting to be a victim. Look, if you
really had a great time and you don't care... pick up the check, but only if
you really want to. You aren't paying for her time... she's not an escort.
Splitting the check is fine.

6) Have things ready to talk about on the dates. Ask stupid questions. Bring
up things you know about her from her profile... have fun with it. Reading
just one book a month will give you an incredibly leg up here.

And be realistic. You aren't perfect... she won't be perfect. The goal is to
find someone you enjoy being with. No reason you can't have a lot of fun along
the way.

~~~
autokad
"Someone said 1/50... I think it was closer to 1/5 women would respond."

thats me,

I'm pretty sure if a plague wiped out all men on earth but me, I still
wouldn't get 1/5\. 1/50 isn't an exaggeration for me. most websites make it
hard to track such things, but the coffee meets baggle app made it easy. out
of 100 i had 2 reciprocation, 1 saying it was an accident. out of the next 65
had 1 more before I deleted the app. on traditional dating sites like match,
pof, etc I had similar though un-quantified results.

~~~
dbg31415
It sucks, but so much of what we see online is the photos. Can you put on some
nice clothes and have a friend shoot some pics of you out around town? Will
probably help improve response rates more than anything else. Good luck!

~~~
vecter
I don't know why you're being downvoted. You gave actually helpful, accurate,
and actionable advice.

------
thisrod
Note that this title has a queer reading, which is almost the opposite of the
straight one. I find it about equally funny and true.

------
pyre
Should say [2013]. I tried to go to the author's blog (rosiesays.com), and I
get redirected to some domain auction site.

------
avodonosov
Can machine learning help?

~~~
pavel_lishin
My blockchain-based dating app solves all of these problems.

------
b6
It sucks for everyone. For women, it sucks because they're being bombarded and
spammed. For men, it sucks because it can be nearly impossible to break
through the noise.

I'm a guy. I'm extraordinarily serious about relationships. I never spam women
because I'd hate to have it done to me, and I hate anything that makes humans
dread talking to each other, anything that degrades the glue that allows
humans to get along with empathy. Before I write to anyone, I've read
everything they provided, and genuinely think we could get along.

But writing to women is an absolute tightrope. Do too much to demonstrate
literacy and general quality as a human being, and the message may come off as
weird or boring. The vast majority of the time, you won't receive feedback of
any kind, so you tend to start trying to anticipate their reservations -- but
if you write anything about your guesses as to why they might not be
interested, you start sounding weird. And you get one chance per person.
Writing again would be weird.

Get nothing back ten times? Twenty? Fifty? You can never ever let it get to
you. You can never get a chip on your shoulder or allow any resentment to show
through.

I accept a lot of this as just The Way It Is. The one thing I would hope to
change in the minds of women, the one memo to women I would send, if I could,
is: we have the internet and airplanes. Please don't write me off because I
don't happen to be in the same city right now! A lot of women seem to want to
cripple OKCupid to be, e.g., OKCupid NYC.

In my last successful relationship, we met on OKC, talked there, and then on
another online chatting thing, and then in calls and texts and emails, and
then I drove several hundred miles to see her. We knew we loved each other
before I left. We were together for a few years. We have internet and
airplanes! This could be a good thing for women.

Every time I disable my OKC account, I feel like it's for the last time, and
the amount of time before I try again gets longer and longer. I feel like I'm
being trained in a bad way.

I'm OK with how things are, but I wish things were better, because the world
would be better if it were filled with people in healthy relationships that
allow them to love and be loved.

~~~
projektir
> I accept a lot of this as just The Way It Is. The one thing I would hope to
> change in the minds of women, the one memo to women I would send, if I
> could, is: we have the internet and airplanes. Please don't write me off
> because I don't happen to be in the same city right now! A lot of women seem
> to want to cripple OKCupid to be, e.g., OKCupid NYC.

I dunno if this is a women specific thing. Location-based matching seems to
just be a "feature" of pretty much every dating website out there, so people
get used to it.

------
nether
Dating fits a common dyad in which a power imbalance exists. Women vs. men (in
heterosexual dating), men vs. women (in many male-dominated careers), police
vs. civilians, whites vs. non-whites, and so on. In such cases, these points
of view are expressed:

More Power:

\- Cooperate in order to reach a successful outcome

\- Lay out your intents explicitly, attempt nothing verging on deception

\- Be yourself, we just want to help you

\- Work hard to better yourself, we haven't done anything wrong. In the vast
majority of cases, you have.

(Overall assertion is that of equality, and denial of a power/privilege
imbalance, and that you should take responsibility for yourself.)

Less Power:

\- Compete with the other party to reach an outcome desirable to you

\- Strategically reveal information in order to effect the above

\- Be yourself, but realize that the other party may not have your best
interests in mind. They prioritize _their_ best interests.

\- Work hard to better yourself, but understand that the other side makes
mistakes, misjudgments and may just as well be as error prone as you.

In any relationship where an imbalance exists we should be aware that both
sides will have sharply differing views. But dating in particular, the concept
of female privilege is a huge minefield. OP article's ideas have been tacitly
admitted to me in person by women, but the large audience online suppresses
women from admitting anything that might not reflect well upon themselves. I
think she's speaking for a large amount of women who deny their privilege via
silence. The general idea might be that privileged deny their privilege,
whether it's through physical attributes, wealth, legislated authority, etc.

------
Touche
Ugh, well, if the roles were reversed here and the author were a man speaking
for women this article would be derided. I think there's even a word for this,
"mansplaining", no? Isn't that exactly what is happening here?

I'm just one man and don't pretend to speak for every man in the world but my
experience with online dating was much better than what she describes. I don't
recall what my "success" rate was but it had to of been at least 33%? Maybe
more?

Maybe the author should talk to men about their experiences rather than
assuming that her own behavior is the norm.

------
xor1
Didn't even realize this article was 4 years old until I started reading the
comments.

Dating apps are the ultimate hunting ground for individuals with borderline
personality disorder. They provide an endless supply of one-night-stands and
no-strings-attached sex, as well as playthings and victims when short-term and
long-term relationships are desired.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Wait, it's impossible to enjoy one-night-stands and short-term relationships
without having BPD?

~~~
xor1
I don't see how you inferred that from my post.

------
houds
I am an Indian man with distasteful dating experience. I am 31, above average
by American means and very much in shape. I weigh 150 lbs having height of
5'7".

I think premature baldness killed it for me in my 20s. I had low confidence
for a long time. I have been shaving my head for 2 yrs now. But, 9 out 10
women here in SF/Seattle/Portland prefer either white or black men.

I haven't been on a date for 2 yrs now. I think TINDER and alike hookup apps
pretty much killed it for men like me. Women used to depend on men for
resources. We have reverse situation now with women outnumering men in terms
of employment rate and graduation rate.

What's worst, Indian women prefer white men if they are in US and master's
degree and 100k or more salary is must for Indian/Asian women. I have first
hand experience of Indian/Asian women telling me that if I don't have masters
then don't bother talking to us.

I deleted tinder profile 3 months back. Nowadays, I spend time just by myself.
I felt bad for a long time, but then I realized nobody cares. Like it or not,
women care about looks, status and resources most. Miss 2 out 3 and you are
done.

I used to blame myself but now I don't. I know I am a competent man, i
contribute to the society in my capacity and this is only life I have. I now
spend Fridays and Saturdays being very relaxed and doing nothing virtually.

Hookup culture is real. That's all I can say.

