[thw09j9m]

I'll chime in as somebody who's been considered top 10% of attractiveness in one country and bottom 50% in another - the difference in the amount of sexual opportunities on apps is absolutely staggering. Not that this should be a surprise to anyone.

Where I am considered attractive, I've gotten 80+ matches in one day and random women messaging me at 11PM telling me they're lonely and to come hang out. I've had more first dates that involved sex than first dates that didn't.

Where I am not considered attractive, I get literally no matches except for the occasional Onlyfans spammer. It was extremely depressing to go from one extreme to the other and I just don't bother with dating apps at all now.

[GaryNumanVevo]

Dating Apps are notorious for this type of gamification. Tinder will literally give your account a huge visibility bump for the first two weeks, after that, it's removed. Of course Tinder would be more than happy to help, if you're willing to pay them to boost your profile again. I've found it mostly happens to my male friends, but I've heard it happening to women as well (mostly of the lesbian / polyam variety)

[blamazon]

Are you sure it had to do with your appearance? I experienced this same thing in the past but in hindsight I came to the conclusion it was because I went from a place where generalized casual promiscuity was an accepted part of the culture, to a place where it's not.

[GregLan]

If you are a white person who goes to a developing nation you'll be top 10% while in your country you may be in the bottom 20%

[leidenfrost]

I know a guy who tried to do that, but his desperation traveled alongside him.

Here in Buenos Aires if there's something valued as much as looks, is spontaneity. So much, that we have the same words for "going on a date" and "hanging out". Because "a date" sounds like you are looking forwards to it and that's a turn off. You have to read the vibe to see if it's really a date or not.

So, as soon as he got some attention, he scared them away.

[zozbot234]

Very good point, this whole notion of "asking X out on a date" is an anti-pattern if you're genuinely trying to get to know each other socially. If you want to "date" in a formal sense, do it after the interest has been clearly reciprocated not before. Anything else really is quite creepy, and it's no surprise that people outside the U.S. will mostly reject it outright.

[soupxix]

maybe in this or that country. in many countries, including the US, "asking X out on a date" is a perfectly normal pattern to genuinely getting to know someone socially and isn't considered "creepy" at all. in general, more people should be more forgiving, especially of foreigners, who try to get to know people socially, especially when it comes down to usage of a single word.

[autoexec]

> So much, that we have the same words for "going on a date" and "hanging out".

Sounds like something that would cause a lot of misunderstandings. How often is that a plot device in sitcoms?

[leidenfrost]

A good and a bad:

Without calling it a date, you are expected to read the vibe. And yes, you can misread it. But, without making it clear, it's not so bad if you misread, because that's where you get the first "no".

I personally think that if one part is into the other, but not vice-versa, not only the relationships won't happen, but also that friendship likely won't happen either. Like relationships, friendships need to have both parties actually wanting it.

[bradlys]

Argentina also just has a lot of white people…

[wonderwonder]

How does that work? Is it an ethnicity issue?

[heyheyhey]

My guess is ethnic male of average height.

Attractive in his native country where his ethnicity isn't a factor and the average height is much lower.

[phkahler]

As a tall male with some success on the apps, I find women 5'10" or more are much more likely to match me than those who are shorter. They prefer taller men and for a tall woman that reduces my competition.

Still contemplating why those apps are so terrible, but the are.

[slenk]

My wife is 5'10" and she said she hated how all the tall guys wanted to date the short girls, leaving the tall girls with shorter guys than them

[yamtaddle]

Shit I can drop like 3 (relative) points on the good ol' 10 scale just by traveling to different sections of my own city. And while I'm not bad by local standards I'm only like a 2 or a 3 in some cities I've visited. From "not bad" to "uggo" just by traveling to another city, without ethnicity being a factor.

[wonderwonder]

how? Honestly I am not doubting you, I have just been married for a very long time so out of the game. Is it a presentation of wealth or dress style?

[yamtaddle]

Largely fitness level and attention to appearance (very-nice well-kept haircuts, probably a little male use of makeup, that kind of thing). Skin care routines (say, consistency of applying sunscreen and wearing hats when outdoors, from early ages on) can vary wildly with local cultural norms and, notably, with class-related socialization, with the result that some cohorts have much nicer skin in middle age than others.

Plus I've been in a few cities where, frankly, it just looks like the gene pool's exceptionally good.

[EDIT] Oh and stuff like serious hair-loss treatments and plugs and such, and skin blemish removal, short of full-on plastic surgery. I can just about guarantee those are more common in rich areas and richer cities than in poorer areas and poorer cities.

[wonderwonder]

That makes sense, I had never even considered regional based attractiveness. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[sangnoir]

> how?

A small town 8(/10) can be an LA[0] 4 or 5. Then again a small town 10 can also be an LA 10. Samples can be biased in weird ways.

0. If you're fan of the LA aesthetic measures.

[justinclift]

LA?

[sangnoir]

Los Angeles: 19 million people and home to Hollywood. It's to attractive people[1] what Silicon Valley is to nerds (not saying there isn't an overlap).

To be completely honest, I also incorrectly thought LA was America's plastic surgery capital - but it turns out to be Miami.

1. Who want to be in entertainment/acting, but being attractive is almost a prerequisite.

[yamtaddle]

Los Angeles, California, USA. Or possibly Louisiana, but surely Los Angeles, from context.

[Spooky23]

People find their tribes. A few years ago at work we were invaded by an intern army of what we affectionately called “dudebros”. They all had prince Harry style beards and talked about IPAs. By all accounts, the female interns were very polarized by the look.

[bmn__]

"just be white", bro

[wonderwonder]

you present this as some sort of negative? What is wrong with people being attracted to certain races? People cannot control who they find attractive and there is no racist component to it. People should be allowed to engage in relationships with whoever they want using whatever criteria they want.

[bmn__]

> you present this as some sort of negative?

I'm glad that you formulated this as a question. The answer is no, I presented it value neutral, both by intent and expressed written form.

Now that GGP has a search term, he might soon find out more about the concept and also might admit it into his mind as real and true, as I once did.

[wonderwonder]

Mentioned in another post but I think I misinterpreted your statement. Based on the search term, this appears to be a concept held by the incel community. Are you positioning it as true and if so, as a solvable problem or just a fact of life?

[bmn__]

> this appears to be a concept held by the incel community

Not exclusively. I would bet that many more people who are completely clueless about incelosphere hold that belief. After all, the belief is as old as the advent of mass communication.

> Are you positioning it as true

Yes, I already said that much; also I will consider it true until a preponderance of evidence comes along that blows the pile of current evidence away.

> a solvable problem

That phrase can be interpreted in two ways.

1. Can a person fake being white? I would say, if the goal is a convincing result, then it's difficult for most people because it would involve cosmetic surgery (expensive, non-negligible risk), and ISTR that the skin treatment to make it appear light in colour comes with nasty side effects that cannot be avoided. For a smaller group, suitable contact lenses might be sufficient. Broadly spoken, the trade-off cost/risk/reward seems bad, that's why we don't see much adoption of the practice, but I gauge that solely from canvassing in popular media. I would be very interested in what the sociologists are writing in their scientific journals.

2. Can society be changed to eliminate the JBW bonus? I don't see how, but since it is an entirely social construct, I admit that under the right circumstances, it could happen quickly. Also, as a white myself, I don't have a particular interest to make it happen.

[matheusmoreira]

People are attracted to attributes that cannot be changed even with effort. Face, height, skin color? There is no "solving" that.

[scarmig]

There's a tension between the belief espoused by many on this thread that a man struggling dating is purely a matter of him being an unkempt, terrible person and the fact that arbitrary things like race can make dating a struggle.

[wonderwonder]

I can agree that being a minority in a small pond can make things more difficult in regards to dating but I don't think that is anyone's fault or that anything should be done about it. I took the person I responded to as meaning that preferring a certain race or ethnicity is a negative thing. Perhaps I misunderstood their intent.

[raxxorraxor]

I had some luck with my looks although I am certainly no super model. I never used a dating app and the thought of them is a bit repellent. I was never interested in meeting women this way at all. Sure, there is a lot of prejudice from my side, but I don't know a single relationship in my fairly large social circle that came about by dating apps. There are exception for some platforms, mainly less gamified dating sites, but it would be difficult to convince me that you are looking for love on tinder. Maybe this is romance for you, but certainly not for everyone.

And I guess there is a tendency that more women don't like this style of dating than men. So the few women that are have a lot of choices. Why shouldn't they use that?

To me this is about hookups and nothing more. And some people aren't interested in that and I guess for several reasons they are also more successful in relationships.

[thefz]

Dating apps are not a solution to this problem. Period. Stop thinking that the light plastic square you carry in the pocket all the time can be the cure for everything. It is exactly the opposite.

[fennecfoxy]

Yeah dating apps are built to extract money out of men so that they can see women. It falls back to standard heteronormative sexual archetypes.

I keep hearing that hetero peeps often split the bill, woman can propose, etc, these days but that seems more like conjecture to me.

[benj111]

Whos considering you in the top 10% v bottom 50%?

How you you know there isn't a cultural difference where one group replies that you're attractive to be polite where as the other says the opposite because they feel you're being rude?

[thw09j9m]

Probably because they're not letting me bang them out of politeness.

[benj111]

So is this statistic based on people you've shagged? This appears to be a self selecting group at best.

Did you find more people to have sex with in one group, and concluding you are more attractive to that group? Are you getting more matches from one group? Is the percentage of matches that leads to sex in one group higher? Non of those necessarily mean you were more attractive to one group.

I mean you could be extremely attractive to devout Muslim women and only averagely attractive to college girls. What do you think the stats would say about how many of each group you slept with after a first date?

[thw09j9m]

Sorry, you're right. I made up those numbers based on data suggesting a pareto distribution of matches. I also didn't intend to imply that I'm somehow in the top 10% of objective attractiveness - I meant attractiveness within the context of the app based on my match performance.

https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/submission/exploitive-....

> Users are assigned an attractiveness score based on how many people like them. The dating apps tends towards a pareto distribution where 20% of the users get 80% of the matches as seen in Figure 5. However, users are sorted based on their attractiveness score, and thus you’re shown users who are roughly in the same league as you. Furthermore, the average male user gets one match in 115 profiles [9]. With only 100 free swipes a day, 80% males who haven’t paid for premium service will average less than a single match a day.

Considering those figures, maybe I'm in the top 20% of the country where I do well (seems unlikely if the 80th percentile is getting less than a single match a day while I'm getting dozens) and I could be anywhere in the bottom 1%-80% in the country where I'm not doing well.