
Dating: A Research Journal, Part 1 (2016) - monort
https://putanumonit.com/2016/02/03/015-dating_1/
======
strenholme
The secret to successful dating is the same as real estate: Location,
location, location. I had much better luck dating in central Mexico (where a
gringo who has had a successful career stands out) than in Silicon Valley.

Even with a favorable location, the online dating market favors women. When I
was in Mexico, it took about 200-300 matches, which became 40-60 active online
chats, which became 12-18 in-person dates, to find the woman who became my
wife. So about a 6% match to date ratio.

As pointed out in the comments to the linked article, this guy did well
because he was in New York, which favors men. Technology hot spots (Silicon
Valley, Seattle, etc.) tend to favor women. Places that favor Caucasian men
include Latin America (Peru being a really good place; Columbia and Mexico
also are favorable), Thailand, the Philippines, Eastern Europe, the Dominican
Republic, and large parts of Africa. In the US, the deep South (Alabama,
Georgia, etc.) are somewhat better for successful men.

With places where the ratios favor the women, it takes about 100 messages to
get a date (and a lot of you’re too short/too old/etc. canned rejections); to
date requires I just send the same spam message over and over (“let’s meet for
coffee!”) until someone says yes. The hit ratio is just too low for me to get
dating success with anything besides spamming.

~~~
MrMember
> It took about 200-300 matches, which became 40-60 active online chats, which
> became 12-18 in-person dates, to find the woman who became my wife. So about
> a 6% match to date ratio.

Stats like those make me not even want to try. Wow.

~~~
strenholme
Yep, and that was in a location which favored me. Online dating is a numbers
game.

Here’s what made Latin American dating bearable for me: If I hit the point
where we met in real life, I made sure to enjoy my time and company with the
woman, even if we were not a romantic fit. I made a lot of friends who I could
socialize and play cards with, so dating and meeting all these women was a lot
of fun.

Also, all the interaction made it a lot easier for me to read signals from
women; when I met my wife, I was able to see she really wanted me and was
already falling in love with me on our first date.

Here in the US, women treat dating like a job interview, which I don’t enjoy
as much as the “Hey, let me take you to the movies, play cards with you, and
have fun socializing together as friends” mindset I had with Latin American
women.

~~~
bksenior
No US women dont, it's just more competitive (looks, power, wealth) so it
feels that way. Girls here are like girls everywhere else, what you're likely
feeling is not being as high on the mate scale as you are in other markets.

~~~
strenholme
I beg to differ. People in Latin America, in general, value conversation and
connections more than people in the US; the dating scene reflects this (I saw
the same dynamics with non-dating connections). A latina girl who didn’t
consider me romantically compatible was more likely to still enjoy hanging out
and playing cards with me (looking at my online friend list, a lot of them are
women I dated in Latin America, including, yes, ones who made it clear they
didn’t want to get romantic with me), while the women I dated from online in
the US were more like “I’m not meeting my goal of finding a mate here, so I
don’t have time to waste on just a friendship”.

Yes, there were two woman from church and social circle I dated in the US who
I was able to keep productive friendships with (a couple are still my online
friend today), so this isn’t a hard and fast rule. But, I have more than twice
as many friends online from Latin America who were girls I briefly dated
compared to US friends who were girls I briefly dated.

------
starpilot
> To these I will add a crucial tip: make it obviously apparent that you
> aren’t copy-pasting. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder finds that a huge number
> of messages on OkCupid are mass copy-pasted spam (he figured this by
> analyzing keystrokes: if it took you two keys to write 50 words, those keys
> were Ctrl+V). These spammers aren’t only gems like ‘u R hot want 2 cum ovR’,
> but also generic missives like ‘Hi, I read your profile and I find you very
> interesting. I think we should get to know each other.’ Since mass-spamming
> is so quick and easy, it only takes a few spammers to fill every girl’s
> inbox. Experienced users sniff these out quickly. I strongly urge against
> being a spammer yourself: most of your time should be spent searching for
> the best potential matches. Once you find a great potential partner you
> should take the time to write them the best message you can come up with.

Rudder also talks about why message spamming isn't banned, though it is
trivial to detect: _they often led to successful exchanges_. The rest of the
article is in this vein; favoring the most politically correct, and gracious
to women, interpretations of the data, and not the most rational.

~~~
monksy
It really depends on the platform and how you go about communicating.

(Note: I'm a guy.. so consider that for my experience/opinions)

OkCupid doesn't really do much for those who want to communicate. (It should
close you off to people who haven't already said they're interested) As a guy,
unless you're a sadist, you have to spam. The best way that I've heard of is
to have a generic/catchy text and slightly modify it based on the profile.
Most women who are looking at the messages aren't giving a lot of
consideration to each message. (Pure economics) Plus they won't pursue.
(Nothing is stopping them. They don't even on Bumble [hi and . aren't starting
messages ladies])

Also, from my experience the best thing you have to do on these platforms is
to:

1\. Boost your pictures

2\. Boost your profile content (get it reviewed by people who know what
they're talking about) [See their success, r/OkCupid is really low quality
feedback, but it's better than a lot of other feedback that I've gotten]

3\. Find a way to get ranked better by their algorithm (i.e. boosts on tinder)

4\. Prioritize messaging people who have already stated their interest in your
first (Buy A list to see who liked you)

------
lkjhdcba
I can't be the only one thinking that treating dating as some kind of MMORPG
you have to grind through is somewhat, I don't know, creepy? And the comments
aren't exactly reassuring. It's all about response rate, market value,
percentiles, figures, and so on. Skimming through this thread you could think
people are talking about the stock market and not actual human beings.

~~~
bonoboTP
It doesn't mean they're this robotic when actually meeting and talking to the
women. It's just a principled and organized approach to the whole thing.

Note that your type of criticism applies to many facets of life, for example
medicine. They are sick human beings with their hopes and dreams, so why all
the talk about blood pressure numbers and iron levels and Latin words, talk
about chemical compounds, et. It's a cold heartless approach these doctors are
having, as it may appear.

The thing is, many people don't have the luxury of ignoring these things.
Unless they follow a principled approach where they reflect on what works and
doesn't and adjust their approach, they won't get anywhere.

------
tlringer
One thing that I think these posts always ignore is that, for a lot of us, the
ambiguity over whether or not it is a date is an essential piece of the
puzzle. So going in knowing it's a date takes away all of the magic necessary
to fall for someone else. I always meet someone as soon as I give up on online
dating.

If I were single again, I think I would like an app that deliberately makes it
ambiguous whether someone likes you or just wants to hang out with you. You'd
have to figure that out yourselves. So you'd choose people you genuinely
enjoyed spending time with, which would increase your potential dating pool,
but you wouldn't go into it without the magic of ambiguity.

Data is always cool though.

~~~
mLuby
The "likes me/likes me not" thing is exciting because of the risk of being
wrong amplifies the reward of being right. Same as game shows with a "wager it
all" mechanic.

But it's not fun to be on the other side of it, where you obliviously think
you're developing a nice new friendship and then it turns out they want to get
in your pants. The problem is most people can't gracefully degrade from crush
to friendship, instead ending up at acquaintance or stranger. So now two
people have wasted a bunch of time and emotion _just_ because some ambiguity
meant they weren't aiming for the same thing. Not worth it on either end if
you ask me.

Therefore removing ambiguity from dating is unequivocally good, as long as it
is done equally. It is a core feature of dating apps.

~~~
tlringer
I developed a huge crush on a very close friend shortly after my ex broke up
with me. He caught on and told me he wasn't interested. We are even better
friends now than we were then. We just took a few weeks apart and then
resumed. I appreciated the transparency, but the ambiguity was still necessary
for developing the crush to begin with.

I met a few people on OKCupid during that time and was not sure if I had the
potential to like them or not because my ex was in close proximity and that
was messing with my feelings a lot. I told them to just be friends and expect
nothing else, and that I'd revisit the question in June. One said he was out;
that was fine, I'd just met him. The other is one of my close friends now,
even though the answer was still no in June.

This happened with someone who was already my one of best friends, too. He was
hurt for a few weeks, but then everything went back to normal and now we are
still best friends.

I can understand why this would be hard after a long-term relationship with
someone you are in love with. My ex and I are still very, very far from
friendship, despite both wanting it eventually. But with someone you have
never even been in a relationship with? It's ridiculous to take rejection
personally and let it get in the way of your friendship.

My current boyfriend, I met when I was running away to another state to get
away from my ex. I was looking for people to practice my Russian with. The
expectation was that we would hang out and speak Russian once in a while, and
then probably never see each other once I returned home. And now I'm in a very
rewarding long-distance relationship.

I don't think it's that the stakes made it exciting. I think it's that the
lack of expectations made it feel safer.

It is just the opposite. So you feel OK getting to know the person just to get
to know them. Then your heart does its own thing. And that's why I think
people say that love "just happens" and not to look for it. You can look for
it, but by doing that, you are setting expectations that might preclude you
from getting to know the person you might at some point love, just for the
sake of knowing them. Not specifically to love them.

The ambiguity is good.

------
nnd
> Even if you’re not a wizard with words, dating sites also offer an absolute
> advantage: the sheer number of users. How can you find love that’s one in a
> million by hanging out at a bar that welcomes at most five new faces every
> night? Do “friends of friends” introduce you to 20 potential dates a day?

This assumption strikes me as a fallacy. I never understood why even bother
with online dating where odds are severely skewed for guys, when it's so much
easier to find dates through your social circle, aka simply doing what you
love and organically surrounding yourself with interesting women.

~~~
colmvp
Yeah I will say this: As an Asian dude, my experience with dating sites has
been pretty mediocre. Literally thousands of profile interactions, handful of
mutual responses, and dates with women where it was clear neither of us were
super interested in one another.

I posted a graphic of the results on HN a few years ago where I pulled data
from CoffeeMeetBagel of every outcome based on ethnicity in my city that's
mostly composed of non-Asians (I don't personally care about ethnicity but
w/e), and well.. it was about what the stereotypes would suggest about Asian
guys as undesirable individuals.

In contrast, my experience with randomly meeting romantic interests either
through work, school, or mutual interests (i.e. hobby meetups) have been more
fulfilling, diverse, and statistically probable.

~~~
atom-morgan
My experience is pretty similar to yours. I'm a pretty good looking guy and
I'm in great physical shape but I feel like two completely different people
irl vs. online dating.

IRL, I feel pretty marketable even in America. Girls aren't googly-eyed or
anything, but I feel pretty confident in my ability to at least secure a date.

But when I go on online dating apps? I might as well be Sloth from the
Goonies. This only applies to America btw - in Asian countries it's a
_completely_ different story.

~~~
scottlocklin
I've done plenty of online dating in my day, and I guess I have no complaints
about my relative success at it (most of which was done in ultra competitive
Bay Area), but I've always found that winning at it is sort of like winning an
argument on the internet or a race in the special olympics.

You can tell almost precisely zero about the person on the other end of the
internet machine, so it becomes a ridiculous numbers game. Beats nightclubs if
you're new to a city I guess, but otherwise "make more friends."

------
tony
That'll be the day when we get accurate measurements from things where pride
and ego is on the line and the sunk cost is glacial.

"I spent a chunk of my life trying to be successful in an overdone, woefully
lopsided, race-to-the-bottom social creation. I wasn't even mildly successful
in the attempt. Nobody acknowledges my effort/sincerity/investment, in fact I
learned it's exchangeable for nothing. Trying to follow the dream, I
compromised my dignity and integrity in bid to succeed. I feel I failed at a
fundamental goal 'everyone' is expected to do to 'make it'" (fear of missing
out)

"Jim spent years of his attending college, moving and settling in an apartment
hours away from home. While he attended courses for 3 years, he didn't
complete enough credits to finish the degree. He's still paying off his loans.
When job searching, it took weeks to even get a lukewarm response for his
resume. In desperation, Jim drastically lowered his standards, not telling
anyone, redoing his resume to adapt to different positions even when they
offered little long term growth, in hopes of getting any feedback. On some
resumes, he even lied about his qualifications. One time Jim even drove 5
hours to meetup for coffee that turned out to be a MLM recruiter" (failure at
career)

"Jacob burned thousands of hours on dating apps. Most thwarted his bid for
physical proximity, let alone emotional support, security, and reliability
expected in a partner. He was routinely spurned by individuals he thought
unremarkable, which he'd never consider or even notice in real life. Trying to
make himself more appealing, he lied about his height and income. On some
occasions, Jacob spent months chatting with a connection, investing enormous
amounts of time in hopes of meeting them, only for them to ghost him. On the
rare occasion he finally met someone in person, they looked much different
than their pic. One time, a date revealed being courted by many others over
years and still using the app actively." (failure at love)

Work and love is a life and death thing. The day people candidly report they
sunk time/effort and they were hurt/humiliated attempting to conform to
"normal" social escapades, pigs will fly.

That said, I know many people who were successful at online dating, and of
course college (with varying extents of completion). Of those, I think their
positive outcome is in spite of the avenue/venue picked. They were uniformly
great communicators/empaths/confident and very motivated.

~~~
strenholme
>>>they looked much different than their photograph<<<

You know, I hear this a lot. One thing I learned early on in dating was to,
from someone’s photographs, figure out how they look in real life. It’s comes
down to this: Are they hiding something in the photographs? If there are no
full-body pictures of them simply standing in front of the camera, you have no
idea what they look like until you meet them.

~~~
Scoundreller
I think I overfit this thought once on online dating. I was thinking a
particular person had no left arm because their profile just happened to
exclude this side.

Turned out to be false.

------
notyourday
This article is completely inapplicable since all the dating services that
have network effect have moved to a mutual match: one does not get to offer a
non-visual ( typically first image ) USP before there's a clear indicator of
interest.

------
weq
Stand out and be weird. This is the best advice. You want to filter out the
cruft and you wont do well at pretending otherwise.

I used the same profile on each dating website, play the field, dont just
limit yourself. You never know what will happen.

------
lcall
I appreciate some of the comments about being thoughtful, systematic. After a
24-year marriage followed by divorce, I spent a great deal of time analyzing
what lessons I needed to learn (plenty), and after my remarriage (I am very
grateful!), I posted this (the dating link is the ~ 4th bullet), which
includes a document I wrote about the process, and a lot of other info I have
collected since. It is influenced heavily by my beliefs (obviously), and
represents a lot of work, and desire for others to be happy. I think it is a
very simple site with much info.

I think real, true love is a decision to faithfully be there and serve a
person through thick and thin, and then sticking with it. It is best if that
decision is well-made. There are many thoughts here (based on experience,
research and lots of observation). Comments welcome (but I probably won't make
the site very pretty anyway :) .

[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854592298.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854592298.html)

(It also includes (buried in there somewhere) a reference to a relative's ~$4
ebook on free or very inexpensive dating ideas (and why dating a variety of
people matters--she married #72 and they seem _very_ happy several years
later), but maybe I should add (on request..) a link to her blog entry where
she posted 100 ideas....)

------
makz
When I did dating I hated it. It was painful and stressful.

It took me like three years of active going through it to find my wife, who by
the way is wonderful.

I hope I will never have to do it again.

Looking at it in retrospective, I think maybe I did it wrong, because it’s
supposed to be enjoyable, I think. But I was clueless back then. Who knows.

------
justlikehoney
Holy shit was this article all over the place. Some interesting theories, but
it's pretty clear from reading this what the author's issue was--he's way too
analytical and left-brained, especially for women in NYC. Glad it worked out
for him, but he'd have been better off dating in the Bay Area.

------
Jun8
Man, beef up this content marginally and it would be a great script for
Netflix series pilot: Sex in the City for the thinking man! I, for one, would
watch that. Or you can take 1-2 people (men and women) each episode, beef up
their profiles and we follow them to their dates.

~~~
neurobashing
You could have a lot of fun with this: narration, 4th wall breaks and funny
on-screen graphics could be used for dramatic and comedic effect, interesting
and fun characters and situations, but. The laws of RomCom demand that Our
Hero end up with either his BFF from uni (who has been crushing on him for
years and, possibly but not necessarily, is also super duper hot when dressed
up “like a girl” or some bs) or some love triangle thing.

Still, science plus romcom? I’d watch.

