I've met my last two girlfriends online. Both were ok, but ultimately didn't last (the relationships lasted 3 & 6 months respectively). And the dates that didn't turn into anything (of which I went on ~10 or so) were really average.
On reflection, the social aspect of meeting people through friends really helps solve a lot of future relationship problems (you have things in common, some level of shared values etc).
In my view online dating is brutal for all. As a guy you are constantly swiping and sending out a lot of messages with a very low conversion rate (I'd be surprised if 1% of all swipes turn into a date). If you go on things like /r/tinder there are lots of guys who complain about being on the platform for months or years and not having a single match. As a woman you're often dealing with hundreds and hundreds of matches. Everyone has to run a massive pipeline which means things end up being very transactional if you aren't careful.
Because there's so much competition things that wouldn't necessarily matter all that much end up being huge deal breakers (say for example height, or niche preferences).
I'm off the apps, at least for the moment, and am focusing on meeting people in the real world.
My success on Tinder was fairly low despite investing a lot of time and money and was causing endless frustration so I stopped using it after realizing it's stupid to put the chances of passing on my genes in the hands on an algorithm that's incentivized to make money off my struggle by intentionally withholding matches until I pay them money(Tinder Gold) or not showing my profile to any women at all until...I pay them more money(Boosts).
So I started learning Game to meet women IRL instead and despite being a short, average looking introvert, got better results with little effort other than being confident, going out and saying Hi and now I'm in a happy relationship with a very attractive woman.
Made me think that probably due to evolutionary reasons there's still a large number of females who value an average looking confident male who can flirt IRL over online profiles of potentially more attractive males.
Reading about these apps, I am so glad I’m a married man, having found a great partner over a decade ago IRL. I’d stand zero chance today, where I’m in competition with thousands of men, over a handful of understandably choosy women. If I were suddenly to become single today I would not have the slightest clue what to do. My hat is off to you young men who have to deal with dating today.
It is not that bad, if you do not want to feel pathetic spending tons of time and money taking great pictures/swiping/having many fruitless conversation/paying for boosts or swipes, the path of lowest resistance is to just get fit, which also has a lot of other benefits.
I had only limited success with online dating, even though I had hundreds of matches and used it somewhat regularly for probably 2-3 years I only went on one pretty bad date + one actual success which was just someone I knew pretty well IRL who used tinder to express that she was interested in me. I didn't have great pictures or pay for special features or anything because out of principle I felt that was participating in a complete bastardization of a pretty fundamental part of human life, finding a partner.
Rather than continue wasting time or do something I loathed, I just deactivated and deleted all the dating crap and started lifting weights. It has without a doubt been a better use of my time
I mean, meeting people online isn't really an alternative to meeting people through friends. If that avenue is open to you already, it's probably one you're already gonna be exploring.
It's an alternative to meeting people through bars and clubs. That's what it's got to be better than (and almost certainly is on a bunch of different metrics).
I’ve had three good LTRs off Tinder. Didn’t use it for hook ups.
Not sure my experience of offline versus online was that radically different, TBH. After relationships would end, I tended to take time off. Then I would get to thinking it’d be nice to start dating again. A mix of online and offline, but online always let me meet people I never would’ve encountered organically. Current partner of 4 years lived an hour away. We never would’ve met. We had a “love at first sight” connection right off the bat.
Dating is hard if you take it seriously. Dating is also hard if you can only succeed online or offline but try both. I think the sweet spot is an attitude and approach that works across both modalities. Everything else is just weighing too heavily in one direction or the other.
I can't really imagine another way to date. People want to go about their day and get groceries without being hit on. People want to go to meetups without being hit on. Nobody wants to play matchmaker for two friends then be stuck in the middle when it doesn't work out. Online dating gives you a way to explicitly opt in to "I want to meet you romantically" and lets you meet people who you would otherwise have absolutely no way to encounter.
> People want to go about their day and get groceries without being hit on
I'm not sure this is always the case. I feel like many of my women friends would prefer to meet someone offline but they do not always get many inbounds so they use online dating. I feel like there's a clear edge for men who ask women out in person because less people are doing so.
Further to this, apps like Tinder are good at showing off looks but not necessarily status. This works great for good looking women but not men who need to convey gravitas/worth in order to attract women. This is based on the theory that men are 'success' objects. I think this is something that is more easily done offline.
The issue is that, as a single man, how do I know which of the 30 women I bump into during a day are open to being hit on and which will feel annoyed? Some may prefer to be hit on but I'm going to annoy a lot of women in the process. Far easier to use an opt in dating app
how do I know which of the 30 women I bump into during a day are open to being hit on and which will feel annoyed?
In effect, you ask them. However, this is not done in the literalist HN style - that is, you do not say "Hi, may I please hit on you?" or any other such set of words.
Nonetheless, one asks, and some will say yes, and some will say no; some will know they're answering, some won't even notice, and sometimes the asker doesn't even notice that they're asking.
To a number of people, this sounds crazy. As crazy as the idea that some authors cannot be read literally to get the meaning of their words. There are languages encoded within language and this is one such. If one happens not to speak this language, I guess it's dating apps or nothing :/
The problem is in the asking. If I see an attractive woman shopping and go speak to her it may be the 10th time she's been stopped in this one trip.
There is so many aspects to this, it's impossible to reasonably discuss it on an online forum. My perspective is living in a major western city that has a lot of culturally middle eastern people living here. The culture is very forward compared to western white culture. Women I know complain about it all the time. A woman living in an area without this culture may wish more men would hit on her.
wendyshu has already answered this elsewhere, but the problem is in asking poorly, without subtlety, and without gauging the other participant along the way. Rather, provide a slowly escalating ramp that they can willing choose to participate in building up towards the two of you engaging in what you are thinking of as traditional flirtation, or just as easily without social or personal cost choose to never get on in the first place. It also helps to genuinely believe that any interaction you would choose to have with her would be positive for the both of you.
> a lot of culturally middle eastern people living here. The culture is very forward compared to western white culture.
Do you mind sharing more? I thought middle Eastern cultures were generally more traditional and conservative about dating and the like, so this sounds unusual.
Maybe in the Middle East but not here. I'd say it's similar to how African American men are portrayed as being forward, i.e. hollering at women and being forward about hitting on women. It could even be related to socioeconomic status as a lot of the men I'm describing would be in lower socioeconomic brackets.
How did you take "rule out meeting a partner and having a family" from what I said? Dating in 2019 is really easy when I have free time I can line up multiple dates per week without having to resort to harassing every attractive woman I pass at the grocery store.
It’s not out of “fear of maybe inconveniencing someone”, it’s out of a sense of common courtesy.
There are plenty of social events that are appropriate for this sort of interaction. Running errands or just trying to go about your day is not one of those IMO, and if dozens of people accosted you per day you’d probably feel the same way.
it may be the 10th time she's been stopped in this one trip
Well that sounds too heavy and aggressive. If a lady is actually stopped by strangers while out, I'm not surprised she's sick of it.
There is so many aspects to this, it's impossible to reasonably discuss it on an online forum.
That is very true. This particular aspect of human interaction and communication, relying so much as it does on things other than the pure literal interpretation of words, is perhaps uniquely unsuitable for discussion on a text only forum where the words are all we have, and doubly so here on HN where the preponderance of people who joyfully embrace literal interpretation is so high!
> Well that sounds too heavy and aggressive. If a lady is actually stopped by strangers while out, I'm not surprised she's sick of it.
But that is the whole point, if a person gets greeted a lot by strangers when they are out it gets annoying quick. So it is common courtesy to not greet strangers in typical every-day errand places like grocery stores. It might be different where you live, but that is how it works where I live.
Start by being friendly and subtle, gauge feedback, then escalate a bit or don't. If she doesn't play along, that's fine you were just being social. Keep it respectful and light. This is expected, normal, and natural. It takes practice. I'm not saying it's easy I'm just saying how it's done.
I know how to flirt, the issue is a lot of women don't want guys flirting with them constantly. In another reply, I mentioned how the demographics of my city have a lot of men from a middle eastern background. Their culture is much more forward and the women I know in my life complain about getting constantly hit on.
This isn't an issue of me being socially incompetent, it's about me trying to be a decent human and not annoy women who are constantly being annoyed. Likewise, I don't want to hit on women in a workplace setting because I feel that people should be able to come to work without being made to feel uncomfortable. Some women may like it but some will feel uncomfortable and it's the latter group I'm being respectful towards.
My policies mean I probably sleep with fewer women than I could but dating in 2019 is already stupidly easy.
From what I can tell the perceived value of a guy impacts the reaction of him hitting on a girl. If your read the tinder statistics middle eastern guys have it harder (seen as lower socially). If you're a successful rich good looking guy girls will love your attention. It seems primitive but hey were just animals at the end of the day.
If you are in Europe, my understanding is that the middle eastern people hit on women a lot because their impression is that white/western women are easy/promiscuous.
Middle eastern men hit on women a lot since refugees are overwhelmingly male, meaning that you have a lot of guaranteed bachelors among them who gets desperate.
> men made up nearly three-fourths (73%) of Europe’s asylum seekers in 2015.
Translation: if I find you attractive talk to me, else don’t. Not very actionable advice. A dating app will at least clear the hurdle of the first part.
Sure, it’s not impossible. It’s actually my preferred way of meeting women. But it can be a huge hurdle, especially if you have not been initiated.
It’s perfectly alright to meet people on dating apps, especially if you don’t have much experience dating. At the end of the day all dating advice is spurious IMO, you have to experience it in order to truly understand it.
This is comically terrible advice. You can’t read someone’s mind even if their body language suggests openness. “Escalate a bit or don’t” is just a bonkers thing to say. There’s such a high risk you are just bothering the other person and no matter how receptive they seem they have infinite entitlement to retroactively claim you were being creepy or pushy or annoying or anything else. The risk is so asymmetrically high that in fact people would rather nauseatingly scroll through self-absorbed profiles online than to express willingness in public spaces.
You say hi to a person. Maybe they say hi back, maybe they don't. If they don't, then leave them alone. If they do, say something else. That's "escalate a bit".
Of course you can't read minds, that's why you use things like language.
Of course the risk is high. You will get rejected a lot. So what if you bother them a bit? The chance you bother them a bit might be high, but the impact is low. It's not like pascal's wager where the risk of being wrong is eternal damnation. The impact of being bothered is basically nil.
How do you think people met before, in the decades between the industrial revolution and the internet?
This step here is already too forward, people don't say hi to strangers. At least where I live it would be totally obvious that you were flirting or just generally creepy if you did this.
What I described is both possible and commonly done. Again, I'm not saying it's easy I'm just saying how it's done. You might be surprised what worlds open up to you when your social skills improve. Believe me, I used to be terrible socially (like, seriously) and I learned a lot since.
You’re wildly ignoring the side effects. When you say “it’s commonly done” you are saying that annoying people, upsetting people, intruding on people, pressuring people is even more commonly done.
> Believe me, I used to be terrible socially (like, seriously) and I learned a lot since.
Clearly not! Your obliviousness in this very conversation, let alone how tone deaf you must sound to the many people you inevitably offend through an antiquated conversational tactic you mistakenly think remains applicable, are strong signals to the contrary.
You've bought into the incel etc commentary that tells you every woman (I'm 99% sure you're male and identify as such - happy to be shot down if that's not the case) is just itching to lodge a sexual harassment complaint against you because you said something polite to them in passing.
By all means, you live in your fantasy world, but people who are able to communicate effectively with people of the opposite sex do so daily while managing not to get arrested for it.
Your language, with its host of technical sounding terms to hide behind, and your narrow focus, makes it clear that you are the literalist I mentioned in another comment. Your attitude and beliefs are crippling your ability to communicate, even as you tell yourself that you're an excellent communicator, treating the English language as if it were some kind of logical set and treating communication as if it were some kind of well-defined, internally consistent theorem. Hard truths that I wouldn't have said to you in person, but here I'm a line of text on a screen and so are you. Good luck.
What a wild place it must be in your mind to try to draw fantastical conclusions about things you don’t know anything about.
I do not buy into incel or MRA language whatsoever, and feel those groups have utterly no point or legs to stand on. I do not at all think that most women are “itching” to make harassment claims as you say, not at all.
Being annoying to the people you approach for dating is not the same thing as harassing them. I’m talking about how the troglodyte approach of assuming you know how to read body language and then hitting on someone at the grocery store leads to bothering people (not harassing them) and is something society clearly doesn’t want, given the dramatic adoption of online dating.
What a self-absorbed assumption to think, “I have good communication skills, therefore I can infer this person’s demeanor means they are receptive to a casual advance.”
People would rather buy groceries or drop off the laundry without having their general friendly demeanor taken as a signal they want to be hit on. Gee, what a shock.
Frankly you sound like a self-righteous kook asserting this dreamed up half Myers-Briggs half horoscope caricature you’re insulting me with based on ~ 4 paragraphs of text data sample. What incredible lack of self-awareness that must take.
Is it possible to upset people if you don't have social skills? Absolutely. Is is possible to have sufficient social skills to not upset people? Yup. Is it possible to improve social skills over time? It is.
All statements that are unrelated to the discussion at hand. What’s merely possible is of no concern. In fact it’s quite telling that you repeat this rhetorical game, side-stepping sincere engagement with the topic.
Lmao OF COURSE there's a highly upvoted comment on a tech website saying this is terrible advice.
It's literally how it's done. Tbh if she's into you it doesn't really matter what you say.
Let me put this into an if else statement for you knuckleheads to understand:
print("Wow this is a really long line!")
if response == "Girl turns toward you, looks excited and tries to continue conversation":
keep talking and see where it goes
else if == "Girl continues the conversation but it's difficult to see if she's interested":
keep talking and see where it goes
else if == "Girl doesn't respond or responds without looking at you, or looks away from you":
stop talking, she's not interested
Nobody does that, at least where I live. So just that one line would be seen as too forward and flirty and annoying. And it is right, I would be very uncomfortable if I knew that every time I visited the grocery store some stranger would likely try to strike up a conversation with me.
To reply to your nested comment: Often the initial stage in flirting if done right should not be annoying, no matter what her recent experiences with guys were. Think "passing a comment about the weather in the checkout line" not "going up to someone and saying you like their shirt".
From your perspective, you're only asking her once so it's no big deal. From her perspective, she's had 10 guys try it today and it happens often when she's shopping.
You're underestimating the ability of women to artfully handle the interaction. You're overestimating the amount of attention they get. You're trying to avoid taking any personal risk. Here, try this: Say something funny. No one's bothered if they laugh.
Exactly. It's just weak men find any excuse to avoid actually putting themselves out there, and would rather post online about how women are all terrible.
Easier isn't the right metric. It's far less selfishly obnoxious to the world to not actively harass random people just in case one of them might be ok with it.
Yeah, they just don’t want people they’re not attracted to hitting on them in public. Actually, I don’t think anyone wants someone they’re not attracted to hitting on them at any time.
I believe that men can manage their image and make themselves attractive to women. If a man believes they are worth speaking to and are attractive, it goes a long way with a women.
If my starting base is "women just don’t want people they’re not attracted to hitting on them in public", then it's would mean that I start from a weak position. I feel like that mentally basically says "I am not attractive and women do not want to speak to me". People can sense this and find it unattractive.
Maybe we need a guideline on which places it is okay to hit on women? Groceries? Tech conferences? Cafe? Yoga classes?
I remember I read complaints from women on Twitter who were hit on by guys in tech conferences. They felt they were being devalued there. Even a senior personality (a man) in tech world had to intervene, "Hey, it is not okay to hit on women in tech conferences."
On the other side, my female friend told me that she is okay if guys hit on her in yoga classes.
So I don't know the answer to this perplexing question. Should we categorize places/events into don't-hit-on-women / okay-hit-on-women?
I think at tech conferences it's less welcome because it's a professional environment. There are many reasons why it's hard to mix relationships and work.
My female friends complain they are hit on by taxi drivers or waiters and acknowledged that sometimes they've reacted pretty badly to their advances and based on what i gathered from their talks, they want a financially well off guy who looks average or slightly better but these are women in their 30s.
While I've some other female friends much younger, they've acknowledged they've rediculed or even got restraining order against few guys who looked bad and their approach came across as hostile based on their looks not behaviour. They often tell me that guys chasing money and career are pretty boring to them and they want more adventurous guys who doesn't care much about money. In short, what I've understood they want very good looking men.
Tho I am from East Asia but I look middle eastern and girls told me I look pretty evil and terrorist. And most girls I been with only liked blonde with blue eye dude with long hair. And money didn't even make it easy for me to attract good girls who want long term relationship.
I did attract the ones who I didn't want to attract and it caused me a lot of problem in life but nevermind, I've moved on and now I've a stable relationship.
What's wrong with being hit on (assuming that it's not sexual harrassment)? What's wrong with taking a risk and setting up two friends? Why do we have to segment all life into easy-to-classify pockets of time: 'work', 'dating', 'getting groceries'? Does this not remove some element of spontaneity and joie-de-vivre that makes life thrilling and make one feel human (and not a finite state machine)? While I think the dating apps can certainly facilitate the meeting of two people who otherwise would never meet, I worry about this general attitude.
I too worry about this general attitude. Not only is flirting fun, it’s built in to our species. It adds a lot of spice to life. If you don’t know how to flirt without “hitting on” someone and making them feel uncomfortable then you have to up your game. I have no desire to live an algorithmic life.
I don't find flirting to be fun. I completely disagree about it being "built in" to our species. I feel that the phrase "up your game" as a strong insult in this context: I don't believe dating should be gamed; I also believe that those who do game dating are among the worst people I've met. That doesn't mean I live an algorithmic life.
I agree, which is why I dislike dating apps. It seems like the dominant practice is for men to "right swipe" or message every woman (regardless of whether they are actually attracted to them or not) then decide whether they're actually interested once they get a match/response.
This results in women getting lots of generic messages from guys who are not actually interested in them. It's really a crappy experience for both genders. However, it seems to be the local optima that modern dating apps converge on.
Also: if you don't hit on a person, then still hundreds of people will do so on a given day. If all polite people stopped hitting on other people then at some point some people will ask themselves: why do only the uninteresting people hit on me?
And the answer is: because the really interesting people play a hard catch and hitting up shopping groceries is not playing hard enough. The really interesting people will like being hit on say, throughout a year on a dance or yoga class though, subtly and slowly.
> What's wrong with being hit on (assuming that its not sexual harrassment)?
There are a great number of rotten people who "cast a wide net". When there's a large number of nets being cast, you start to drown in the sea unable to spot the difference between someone genuinely interested in a relationship and someone who's just sexually harassing you.
Yes, but with a caveat: it's a lot harder (and a lot more premeditated) for someone online to harm you than if they're standing next to you. Moreover, you can usually block people from talking to you or even seeing you exist online. Walking away from rotten people can easily escalate into a physically dangerous situation.
> What's wrong with being hit on (assuming that it's not sexual harrassment)?
Because the definition of "hitting on" varies so widely. It can vary from a compliment to their clothing to cat calling, depend on who you ask.
> What's wrong with taking a risk and setting up two friends?
Because as you admit, it's a risk. It can create an incredibly awkward situation if you're in the middle if they split up.
> Why do we have to segment all life into easy-to-classify pockets of time: 'work', 'dating', 'getting groceries'?
I learned the hard way to not mix work and dating. And when I'm running errands, I just want to get them done and go back home. I'm not interested in wasting time talking to people I don't know.
> Does this not remove some element of spontaneity and joie-de-vivre that makes life thrilling and make one feel human (and not a finite state machine)?
I think you're just more extroverted than I (and probably a lot of others on HN) am.
> What's wrong with being hit on (assuming that it's not sexual harrassment)?
Regardless of the intent of the pursuer, it (sometimes) makes people uncomfortable. I believe that people deserve to be able to grocery shop without having to worry about letting someone down easy or dealing with someone who gets aggressive when rejected.
> I believe that people deserve to be able to grocery shop without having to worry about letting someone down easy or dealing with someone who gets aggressive when rejected.
Delivery is so fast and ubiquitous that it makes me wonder if the only people actually going to the grocery store are people looking for social interaction.
Maybe we should have designated, opt-in, "social spaces" where human<->human interaction isn't considered a breach of norms? Or the other way, there could be designated areas where interacting with strangers is forbidden for your convenience.
When we finally get AR, I wouldn't be surprised if you could put yourself in "busy mode" IRL, so other AR-enabled people would know to leave you alone.
It’s uncomfortable? If you have ever been in a situation where you are in close proximity with someone who is openly attracted to you it feels weird, like you are being surveilled and there is an expectation that you cannot and don’t want to fulfill. Not that I am often hit on but the few times it has happened it registered in my brain as “ohhh I see why women don’t want this kind of attention”
People want to go about their day and not be hit and have to reject people face to face. It's a difficult interaction human interaction to have.
People DO want to go about their day and be hit on by the right person. When I was single, I loved being hit on by someone who I was into. It was fun. And I hated it when I had to let someone know I wasn't interested, it was terrible.
One of the issues that online dating solves is it makes the rejection process easier and less confrontational for the person being approached.
One example, for every person that will speak for a woman that clearly had her headphones on and didnt want to talk, there are just as many women that arent trying to telepathically signal to leave them alone and are open to the interruption
Everyone operating in absolutes are at a disadvantage
There will always be people better at reading this, there will always be people attractive enough to get a pass on actions that the internet says are always bad, there will always be people part of a hookup that “didnt count” which is never considered when people complain about how they get hit on
People are gatekeeping to reduce unwanted attention from unattractive people
Ever heard of a bar of a club? Still a very good way to meet potential partners. Also people date people they meet in activities all the time - close friend of mine met her partner in her martial arts class.
I kinda agree with you with a few nebulous exceptions. One, me, and most single people I know, would be perfectly fine with meeting some going about a day, i.e. grocery shopping. That doesn't mean I want pickup lines thrown at me, but if you're interested, start up a conversation. Secondly, I am also okay with the concept of meeting people online, except I can't find a network that doesn't make me feel like a creep. They all make me feel like I am shopping for a person that I think is attractive.
Flirting is an art that can be learned and it's fun. The body language, tone of voice, looks - everything is designed to be sensed.
It takes some strong powers of denial to suggest that looking at pixels on a screen can even compare. Yours is just the modern, considerate iteration of being scared to approach women.
I think it is a definite improvement over how it used to be which was either just hit on everyone/be hit on by everyone or go to a lot of social functions and acquire friendships that might blossom into something else more naturally. I have more of a dislike for the former approach than the latter.
I would advice most people to stay away from online dating. Especially if you social anxiety or low self esteem. Why would you place the chances of finding love in the hands of a corporation?
In the case of tinder here is why:
After I sign up tinder I started getting constant ads. These ads have followed me for months, to this day. Here is the most recent example: https://imgur.com/a/IJFCG0m.
Most dating apps are owned by a single company Match group. They own for example: BlackPeopleMeet.com, Chemistry.com, Delightful, FriendScout24, HowAboutWe, Match.com, Meetic Group, OkCupid, OurTime, People Media, PlentyOfFish, Tinder, Twoo, Hinge. In fact, tinder's delete account button is very conveniently placed. They don't care if you delete your account... as long as they can shuffle users around. The match group itself is owned by an even bigger corporation IAC. It owns about 150 brands worldwide. For example: TripAdvisor, Expedia, Ask.com, The Daily Beast, About.com, Dictionary.com, Investopedia, among many others.
I have a hard time believing that Tinder have any incentives to make you find date. Why would they do that? You will quit the app and they will stop making money!
I believe they use a lot of dark pattern to try to sell stuff. Here in an example: https://i.redd.it/e13yeek795x21.jpg. When I used tinder they keep the notification "there is someone that like" but they would actually show me the person. Another example of the dark patterns: https://i.redd.it/r0lheira9rh31.jpg. They also shadow-ban users among many other things.
> I think that internet dating is a modest positive addition to our world. It is generating interaction between people that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
People who have in the past had trouble finding a potential partner benefit the most from the broader choice set provided by the dating apps.
I feel online dating is skewed in favor of users who are in top x% attraction level. The return on time spent is poor if you are not very attractive.
Moreover, I think it's difficult to switch it off completely. It's harder to commit, invest time and effort to build a strong relationship even when things are not going smooth - when there is endless potential of finding someone better/more beautiful/taller/richer etc. just a few swipes away.
Yes. What I meant was, I think the skew towards more attractive people is higher when it comes to online dating.
Offline, people may know each other from work, mutual friends etc for some time before they actually start dating (not including speed/blind dating). In my experience, getting to know someone in person first and having a sense of comfort and security makes the physical attractiveness aspect somewhat less important.
I second this. In particular with something like Tinder, the only thing that matters is attractiveness. There is no place on Tinder to put details like hobbies, interests, etc. it is just a giant game of hot-or-not.
Other sites like OkCupid are better in that respect.
I recently had a bizare experience. My girlfriend that I met in college and was dating for 4 years broke up with me and a week later I saw her profile on Bumble.
It was definitely very upsetting. Women have a lot more power with online dating and can essentially meet someone at anytime if they are good looking. I don't doubt that she has dozens or even hundreds of messages from guys.
I don't have many high quality pictures and I don't do very well.
In online dating it's definitely true that a small percentage of men (say 20%) has sex and the opportunity for a relationship with the majority of women (say 80%).
>I don't have many high quality pictures and I don't do very well.
So you know recognize your problem area, then go work on improving those. Get fit and dress better. Get professional photographer to took your pictures, etc. Women too has too spend time and effort on these.
Better to be single than with someone who would throw away a serious relationship for some flings. At the very least be thankful she had the decency to end things with you first.
You’re subtly insinuating that the woman was being shallow or petty, when in fact, she could have just not wanted to move forward with the relationship.
Why do you believe that the woman owes the man anything after ending the relationship? A woman is not obligated to feel emotionally conservative just because her former partner does.
As a gay man, meeting other men online is the only way I can. :-(
There don’t seem to be many appropriate dating spaces for the LGBTQ+ community in the physical world... maybe it’s just a fact of being in your mid twenties during a time of great change, but I wish there were spaces that didn’t necessitate drinking, where you could meet people in this arena.
Overall, online dating makes me quite sad. It’s very easy to judge and dismiss someone online based on a few lines of text and some photographs.
That’s probably why I’m still single. Nobody’s interested in my profile or photos. It’s hard to stand out in such a competitive arena; I’d prefer to get to know people in the flesh.
>There don’t seem to be many appropriate dating spaces for the LGBTQ+ community in the physical world...
>I wish there were spaces that didn’t necessitate drinking, where you could meet people in this arena.
Not sure to understand clearly.
Honestly you can go a to a bar and order a Dr.Pepper there is nothing that's going to stop you from doing that... I'm not sure to understand entirely there are many gay bars / nightclubs everywhere I'm sure most of them are appropriate spaces to flirt or engage with other people...
Ah, my apologies. I should’ve spent a bit more time composing my original comment before posting.
This comment is solely about my experiences: I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone.
In my experience, I go to a gay bar or a nightclub and, well, it feels like they don’t want to flirt or get to know me, they just want sex.
That’s what I meant about “appropriate” spaces —- somewhere that isn’t going to be overly sexualised to my detriment.
I look around and I don’t see anywhere I can start a conversation without someone who’s behaviour (eg entitlement to have sex, or drunkenness, or harassing me, or potential violence, etc.) would negatively impact on me being in that space.
That includes being harassed by straight people in these spaces. Hen parties who want a “gay BFF”, homophobes (because a small minority are increasingly vocal about their opposition and will act on it), etc. which make me reluctant to go to these spaces right now.
Are there solutions to these problems? Of course, but it feels a lot harder to implement them than it would if I weren’t gay. From my point of view, the social structures we’ve established as a civilisation aren’t quite equal (e.g. I can’t just go up to someone at the supermarket and flirt with them without potentially risking violence) and that’s what saddens me the most.
I don’t know if you’re LGBTQ+, but if you’re not, the pressures and challenges the LGBTQ+ community face in this area are distinct from the heterosexual dating community.
So, yes, online dating—-for me—-is the safest way to meet other men, even though I would prefer that the real life spaces were safer and more accommodating.
Personally, using apps diluted the spark of dating for me so I stopped using them. The most intense part of "mating" for me are the initial stages of attraction, trying to suss out whether or not the opposite party is attracted to you and reading the signs, that and flirting can generate a great high because there is such risk.
At the end of the day once the app sets you up you'll have to flirt anyway to generate attraction -- but if you've ever had a spontaneous flirtatious interaction with someone you're attracted to you know what I mean.
Introversion is not a lack of social skills. Introversion is an inclination toward solitude. Social anxiety is its own thing and says nothing about social skills. Even great socializers often have social anxiety.
>but if you've ever had a spontaneous flirtatious interaction with someone you're attracted to you know what I mean
The problem with spontaneous flirting is that you don’t know if it is welcome by the other party. With a dating app, you know that flirting is desired by both parties.
I am more interested to know whether successfully married couples are more likely to meet online than all couples. Maybe this simply demonstrates an uptick in number of relationships and less time someone is single until they find their long-term mate/partner.
I don't have data to back this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone who gets married today is more likely to meet their husband / wife online. There are a few reasons for this.
- Lower risk of looking bad. Date didn't go bad? No worries.. none of your friends have to find out it was your fault.
- Less pressure from family and friends to pair up with someone. They'll only find out when you're ready.
- Fewer couples meet at work - there are many reasons for this, and some may even argue that this is for the better. But, this does mean that more people will meet online.
- Fewer couples meet at church. There just aren't as many church goers in Western countries as before. Again, there are a few reasons for this.. but the result is that more people end up online.
- People move more than ever. And it becomes more difficult to meet someone as we get older (no school to be a common connection), and one day you just want to meet your next relationship. So you get right down to business: get an online dating account.
- More choices to find that perfect someone online.
Completely anecdotal but all the young couples I know getting married have all met in real life, no exceptions. It makes me suspect HN’s claim that everybody meets online today. My anecdotal experience says it’s exactly the opposite.
I have at least 4 married couples amongst my friends that met online (2 of them through World of Warcraft, though). I'm about to get married to a woman I met through online dating.
I was actually trying really hard to date people in person too, I was going to tons of meetups, and getting some dates out of that, it just so happened that the woman I'm marrying ended up being someone that messaged me on an online dating app four years ago.
I do know married couples that met through Meetup and other in-person methods as well, so online is definitely not everyone's only option anymore, but online is a definitely viable option.
It's important to notice that online dating is how most couples meet, but what constitutes a "couple" here? I don't believe it means a long term relationship that lasts more than months.
For my fiancee and I, we know lots of couples through our friends and including through each other's work. The number that have met online is miniscule. "meeting people" is easy online, but relationships are hardfought when that's the start.
I did online dating in my 20s, matchmaking in my 30s and finally met my fiancee in my neighborhood bar (we don't drink, it just happened we were both there not drinking).
> Completely anecdotal but all the young couples I know getting married have all met in real life, no exceptions. It makes me suspect HN’s claim that everybody meets online today.
Yeah. I "dated" online but it was a total waste of time. The only sparks I've ever gotten were from people I met naturally.
That is pretty interesting! Maybe it is a generational backlash to social media accounts =).
I have two pretty young friends (early 20s) - one met his significant girlfriend through other friends on a night out. The other met his girlfriend online. They're both pretty happy.
Equivalently, you can look at divorce statistics of couples that meet online vs offline. A study from 2013 suggests that the divorce rate is lower and marriage satisfaction is higher for couples meeting online, but only slightly. This seems to suggest that online dating is only marginally better than offline dating.
When I was a kid, I just thought that all couples who lived together were "married". It didn't matter whether there was a ceremony, or a legal contract. They lived together, made out with each other (ew), and since they were family friends, they were also automatically uncle and auntie.
Then priests and politicians decided to mess it all up.
I don't have anything against online dating in principle, though I do find it pretty weird, but there's got to be a better way than relying on obscure matchmaking algorithms, shitty apps optimizing for engagement and your being single (remember, if you're not single you're not using the app), run by shady companies harvesting all of your data. Americans will always surprise me in their ability to surrender every single aspect of their life to megacorporations, even the most intimate and personal ones.
HNers are quick to sh*t on Microsoft, Google and all for telemetry but will gladly give all their most intimate info to these shady dating companies with no concerns for privacy.
I'm sure it is, but I can't help but feel that that's mostly because more traditional ways to meet people have basically evaporated due to social and economic forces.
Personally, I found online dating such a tedious affair that I decided I'd rather be alone.
> We present data from a nationally representative 2017 survey of American adults. For heterosexual couples in the United States, meeting online has become the most popular way couples meet, eclipsing meeting through friends for the first time around 2013. Moreover, among the couples who meet online, the proportion who have met through the mediation of third persons has declined over time. We find that Internet meeting is displacing the roles that family and friends once played in bringing couples together.
I haven't looked at the underlying data (but its publicly available - yay!), but it does sound from the abstract and the dataset's website like the author may be (and the article definitely moreso) reading into the fact that it's online too much, and not really looking into the actual dynamics of the ways people interact online. They mention "mediation" by friends, but it's not clear to me if one or both of (1) meeting at an event hosted by a mutual friend and (2) being exposed to each other because of a mutual online friend are considered "mediation" by the friend. I know a lot of couples have first interacted because they were friends-of-friends (i.e. sliding into the Instagram DMs), but there was no active mediation (i.e. setting up) from the friend. It's all passive. Other than the fact that more socialization is done online in general, those situations aren't that different with respect to how important the friend is.
The article then mentions "algorithms", which I think is a bit generous considering how popular the apps are that don't match you up based on much more than gender preferences and location. Instead, you just go for volume online and evaluate the match in-person or through subsequent chat. It seems like match-making algorithms have decreased in perceived importance as online dating has matured. e-Harmony used to push it big time, but it seems like the Tinders of the world absolutely dominate now.
If you're quoting something, prefix the line with a > symbol rather than 4 spaces. Quoting with 4 spaces is intended for entering code, and it messes up formatting if the line is long.
A friend recently introduced me to a new dating app. Every picture looked like it was taken by a professional travel photographer (with the candidate somewhere in the scene).
>I was surprised at how much online dating has displaced the help of friends in meeting a romantic partner. Our previous thinking was that the role of friends in dating would never be displaced. But it seems like online dating is displacing it.
Hmmm. In my experience friends are still pretty heavily involved (assuming one has friends). They're just not involved in the discover process, but they're definitely involved in the filtering process, perhaps moreso now.
So it seems like online dating has mostly just replaced the discovery process - how do you find people to meet. This is probably a good thing. But once you've met a person I still think your friends provide feedback that may determine whether you see that person again.
Years ago I met my wife online. Now, I wonder which companies have bought our messaging histories... and when a breach will release those and any other content I posted back then.
I guess we can quibble about the definition of "attractive" and "need to date online," but I think most people who date online find that there are other people who are dating online who are attractive.
I don't think this is true. Attractive people in particular have a massive amount of opportunities in online dating which is a huge incentive for them.
Note that "meeting online" includes things like social networks, games and chats, along with actual online dating. In 2017, 39% of new couples met met online. Online dating itself only accounted for about 24% of all new couples.
This is like saying I'm doing "online job seeking" because I find out about jobs online. At a certain point, that's just the default for how it's done. Similarly, I'm not "online working" because my job is done mostly online. I'm just working.
Yeah, especially because there is no stigma anymore. When I met my wife online 15 years ago, I used to joke that we met at a strip club because that was less embarrassing than admitting we met online. Today, most younger couples I know got together after hooking up on Tinder. It's a complete non-issue and the default in North America, at least.
I’m not sure if you’re being glib but there really is a fundamental distinction here. Meeting someone because of the workings of an algorithm on a platform both of you have signed up for is substantially different than meeting someone through mutual friends or even through happenstance.
And your line of work may not be differentiated by whether or not it’s online, but that is not true of a whole host of more traditional jobs. I’m thinking not just of anything involving manual labor but also of the majority of service work, from hairdressing to restaurant service. All of those jobs remain in the offline realm and it would be a big deal if they were moved online, just as it’s rightly seen as a big deal that courtship has moved online.
You'd be surprised by how many service jobs use the internet all day as part of their jobs. I can't speak as much to manual labor, but imagine it's similar to service work in which while not in front of a desktop computer they're using online technology. We can't just say that people with a physical keyboard are the only ones working online. You specifically mention restaurant work, but it's pretty common to see iPads and online computer systems used for payments. And hairdressing? The first thing I do when I get a haircut is go to the front desk where the person checks me in via a computer -- and others make appointments... online. We are not part of some elite class of people who use the internet.
One of the things you'll notice about this study is that it doesn't consider all SORTS of "online" ways of meeting people online to be "online dating." That's a clue that the term has lost all meaning.
In the pre-internet days, there were matchmaking services that utilized video tapes and classified ads. Current online dating firms are the spiritual descendants of those services. It’s reasonable to differentiate between those methods and meeting someone in a more organic way, say on a message board dedicated to a mutual interest.
Then differentiate! My point is "online dating" is a non-sensical way to differentiate Tinder from www.MutualInterestForums.com. Maybe use "algorithmic dating" as a term? And even then, the algorithm is also often informed by your list of friends.
Also, "organic" doesn't exactly describe much of what used to be traditional dating, either. Your parents setting you up isn't organic.
There's an algorithm either way. It's certainly reasonable to be concerned with how dating services' algorithms work, but I don't think it's too challenging to beat the algorithm of "here are people who live or work in very close physical proximity to you."
> Meeting someone because of the workings of an algorithm on a platform both of you have signed up for is substantially different than meeting someone through mutual friends or even through happenstance.
I trust an algorithm that gives me results based on personality questions far more than happenstance. I met my wife on OKCupid on OKCupid in 2010. We are both home-bodies, so it's unlikely either of us would have met such a good match without online dating.
I also like online dating because you can hammer out deal breakers before you even meet, often before you even send your first message. For example, I never want children (Got a vasectomy years ago to make sure it never happens), so I don't want to waste years with someone who does.
I think what the study is really talking about is "algorithmic-based" introductions. But excluding a situation where you see a friend-of-a-friend comment on Instagram and sending them a message from "online dating" just shows how useless the term has become because it's all online.
My wife was introduced by a mutual friend in 2000. Married 4 years later. The year before I had tried dating websites such as Match and they were atrocious. Fake profiles, delayed email responses, bad dates based on what the programmers thought would ideally "match" people up.
I imagine the smartphone and dating or hookup apps are so much more sophisticated today. Or maybe I dodged a technological bullet?
Times have changed. They're not necessarily more sophisticated (at least not visibly, algorithms not withstanding), but the stigma of online dating isn't nearly what it was. In 2000, as a man in search of a woman, your chances of actually finding a legitimate mate were way lower than they are now. Sure, there's still some catfishing/fake profiles out there, but they're relatively easy to flush out, and there are many real women out there. In other words, the user pool itself has changed.
It's been a while since I've been online dating (almost a decade), but the best site I found was not even a dating site (well, not primarily a dating site, but most people there tended to be single):
I'd sign up for hikes and other things I was interested in and met a lot of women, dated a few. One good thing is that you'd tend to see the same people over and over, so you can get past the quick 10 second "like or not" rut that you get into with online dating, and you start to see people more for their personality.
But it's a time investment, with online dating I could typically go out on one or two dates a week, while with meetup hikes, I'd maybe find someone to date every month or two of weekend hiking.
Ultimately though, I found my wife on a whim through a non-dating chat service - she was living thousands of miles from me and I picked her pretty much at random (no profile, no picture, just a username, age, and gender). Took nearly a year of chatting before we even met in person.
I'm a bit on the younger side (23) but I've used online dating almost exclusively for finding partners over the past 2 years. Being a bit of a numbers freak, I downloaded a copy of all my data from Tinder and made a Sankey diagram with it and it ended up being pretty cool to look at: https://imgur.com/a/ueNmDlZ
I don’t have any way of comparing this beyond anecdotally but... I’ve dated one only person and for many years.
I’ve never had the chance or reason to use online dating. But I feel like most of my friends who do enter committed relationships from online dating don’t seem to trust each other very much even after a significant chunk of time and it seems weird to me. Curious if this resonates.
On reflection, the social aspect of meeting people through friends really helps solve a lot of future relationship problems (you have things in common, some level of shared values etc).
In my view online dating is brutal for all. As a guy you are constantly swiping and sending out a lot of messages with a very low conversion rate (I'd be surprised if 1% of all swipes turn into a date). If you go on things like /r/tinder there are lots of guys who complain about being on the platform for months or years and not having a single match. As a woman you're often dealing with hundreds and hundreds of matches. Everyone has to run a massive pipeline which means things end up being very transactional if you aren't careful.
Because there's so much competition things that wouldn't necessarily matter all that much end up being huge deal breakers (say for example height, or niche preferences).
I'm off the apps, at least for the moment, and am focusing on meeting people in the real world.