[hnthrowaway6543]

> Apps are more transparent and equitable with how they expose profiles to other users. Don't bias toward highly liked people to increase perceived "quality" and shadow-hide show profiles that aren't liked often (and then ask them to pay lol). Show people more randomly, to better represent the true cross section of people on the app.

This won't work; if you do this, you'll expose that the average online dating user is... well, average.

There's a bit of kayfabe going on; users want to think the other users of online dating are 8+/10, sexy, flirty, fun, and desirable singles. Unfortunately, 69% of Americans are overweight and 36% are obese. If profiles users see weren't heavily weighted toward highly-rated ones, the perception of online dating would immediately change from "online dating is fine, a bunch of attractive people are using this" to "online dating is only for the ugly and desperate"; the article points out that this is the way Gen Z perceives online dating already.

Dating apps really struggle to keep the most desirable, because those are the ones least likely to need it. Yet they're also the most important for a dating app to have. As fewer desirable people use it, the less perceived legitimacy it has, which results in fewer people using it, particularly the desirable ones. I suspect dating apps are experiencing this death spiral now.

[sweetro17]

I see your point here - and I do agree, from experience, people sometimes express a desire for a bit of reality distortion in dating (we often heard that they want the experience to feel more like 'fate' or 'chance' than overly engineered).

That said, I don't fully agree with the idea that there's a uniform concept of x/10 scale for daters and that they uniformly will balk at those below that uniform rating and therefore the only way forward is boosting those based on their global like %. And some data backs this up.

The oft-cited OkCupid Dataclysm book talks about variance (e.g. lots of people like / lots of people dislike), explaining variance is meaningfully more important to messaging and engagement than raw like %.

Additionally, on the point of weight / body type, we found that a little under half of daters (and > 50% of women interested in men) do not report body type to be a significant factor in their decision making. So it is a meaningful factor, but for about 1/2 of daters it isn't.

The point I'm trying to drive here is, while there is for sure data and intuition that points to what you're describing, there are others that point to other ways that people perceive the quality and likelihood of finding a partner on an app that may work as well, if not better, while not relying on a need to as heavily hack perception.

[nradov]

Body type is a significant factor for way more than 50%. People lie on surveys because they feel guilty for being superficial.

[throwaway290]

> Body type is a significant factor for way more than 50%. People lie on surveys because they feel guilty for being superficial.

I think you are extrapolating your own view. You have no way of knowing what they feel and even for an educated guess you do not know which country/social class/occupation those users tend to be from in the app being discussed.

[PoignardAzur]

Revealed preferences are a thing, no matter the social class. What people self-report to want and what they actually want is rarely the same, especially in fields with high social pressure.

[throwaway290]

Of course but you can't just claim that because you feel like X then everyone feels like X even if they say Y. You gotta have something to back it up. Especially if you represent a minority of users in many categories...

[PoignardAzur]

First, I think you're making some big assumption by implying that GP's statement is him projecting his own beliefs/attitudes, rather than being generally cynical.

Second, I think "people are superficial and attracted to people who fit conventional beauty standards" is a fair null hypothesis. That's what conventional beauty standards mean. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that people's stated preferences there are biased towards making themselves look less superficial.

[shiroiushi]

>Additionally, on the point of weight / body type, we found that a little under half of daters (and > 50% of women interested in men) do not report body type to be a significant factor in their decision making. So it is a meaningful factor, but for about 1/2 of daters it isn't.

According to the previous poster, 69% of Americans are overweight (36% obese). Assuming the dating app users are representative of Americans, then well over half of those daters are, themselves, overweight. So of course many of them won't report body type to be a significant factor! They're already overweight, and their expectations in a partner are probably realistic. What's disturbing is that only about 1/2 of daters said it wasn't a meaningful factor: this means that almost 20% of daters are both overweight AND (assumedly) expect to date fit people.

[carabiner]

Do you also think women hate shirtless photos? Btw, this photo went viral a few weeks ago: https://imgur.com/a/CfXdtK2

[lou1306]

This is an advertisement for underwear. And it features a professional actor. Context matters.

[atleastoptimal]

That's true. The sad reality about dating is that, for 99% percent of people, the partner that would be ideal for their tastes is "out of their league" so to speak. Humans have dealt with this reality of dating acting somewhat like a marketplace via mores of commitment, dating within social classes, condemnation of promiscuity, etc., but the human nature is still there. 10's want 10's, but 5's don't want other 5's, they also want 10's.

The strategy most dating apps use has been to keep people in a perpetual cycle of heightened seeming possibility. You see the young, cool, attractive people, and perhaps one out of 100 times you'll strike out, and the unlimited options keep you feeling that such an opportunity could happen infinitely. For average hetero dudes, this obsession will drive purchasing premium, paying for swipes and super likes, etc.

I know it's controversial but I do believe that robotic/AI partners is the "ideal world" solution to this. You get someone who fulfills all your physical needs so you don't have to play the roulette in real life, or string along someone in your league because you believe you could get someone out of it. I'm sure in the future we'll see them similar to how we see sex toys today.

[throw310822]

Strange analysis. Considering that what people want from dating apps is sex and partners, and that both are easier to obtain from people of matching attractiveness. As a former dating app user, the possibility is something I never cared about: I cared about a date, there is a marketplace and- while I will try to find someone acceptable- certainly I'm not wasting my time chasing people out of my league. That produces just waste of time and money, rejection and frustration.

I would rather say something different: dating apps have zero interest in making you find a partner- this means for them simply losing a customer. They would rather keep you in a cycle with some intermittent reward but preferably without losing you.

Finally there is an huge difference between different classes of users: at the very minimum by gender, attractiveness and purpose. Casual sex is a totally different use case than looking for a partner; high attractiveness allows using the app intermittently for immediate reward, while average people need to put much more effort and entirely different mode of use. But despite all this complexity, apps have converged to a single hyper-simplistic model that optimizes maybe intake of new 20 year old users but works much worse than it could for most people.

[lmm]

> Considering that what people want from dating apps is sex and partners, and that both are easier to obtain from people of matching attractiveness.

But people don't have an accurate perception of matching attractiveness. The average person is a 5 who thinks they're an 8. And they've been looking at celebrities rather than average people, so if you match them with a 5 then they'll think that's a 3.

[throw310822]

And yet the overwhelming majority of people of average attractiveness have mated and formed couples and married since forever. So that's possible. If an app is not able to match them, must be a failure of the app, not of nature.

[shiroiushi]

Ages ago, people had very, very limited dating options: generally only the suitable partners in their village. They didn't have porn to distract them, and they weren't allowed to just stay single because of social pressure and (for women) economic need. It was rare that anyone stayed single, and they were generally considered weird or "unmarriageable".

So basically, people took what they could get, even if it meant someone they didn't care about or worse, someone who was downright abusive.

The higher rate of singledom these days isn't necessarily a bad thing. Centuries ago, these people would have gotten married, had terrible marriages, and produced kids (remember, no contraception back then) that were neglected and abused and grew up to be awful people.

[lmm]

> And yet the overwhelming majority of people of average attractiveness have mated and formed couples and married since forever.

This was true up until a few decades now, but the rate of all of that is now declining precipitously.

> If an app is not able to match them, must be a failure of the app, not of nature.

Or there is a broader societal problem causing a decline in all forms of dating, not just apps.

[Spivak]

You're defining attractiveness like boomers handing out grades where in real life that's not how the 10 scale is used, it follows video game review rules where 7 is middling.

And this is right to happen with humans same as video games. It's not centered at average it's centered where 5 is "not quite unattractive." And because the typical human is attractive the average sits at around 7.

[hbn]

> And because the typical human is attractive

Most people where I live are overweight, and even higher if you're only looking at women (my dating demographic).

I don't think my standards are very high and I'd say 5 is high for the average woman I see, just because of weight alone.

[escapedmoose]

Your dating standards are high if weight automatically makes someone a sub-5 in your eyes. I’m not saying that’s morally wrong—you like what you like. But recognize that it’s a high standard and will make dating more difficult.

[Spivak]

I mean look you're attracted to what you're attracted to but this is such a sad comment. You're not like doing anything wrong but reading this it's not so surprising that 2/3 of women have disordered eating.

[The_Colonel]

That's a lot of subjectivity. For me, an average human is 5 and not really attractive.

[watwut]

The idea that real world couples necessary match attractiveness is kind of incels invention. And then they get angry whenever they see a couple with one person super attractive and other .. normal.

[throw310822]

I find the whole argument, especially with the grades, silly. But it is true that usually partners match each other by attractiveness- also keeping in mind that attractiveness is not exclusively physical and means different things for different people. Attractiveness is not a scalar, it's a vector.

[atleastoptimal]

> I would rather say something different: dating apps have zero interest in making you find a partner- this means for them simply losing a customer. They would rather keep you in a cycle with some intermittent reward but preferably without losing you.

It sounds like you're agreeing with me. The apps benefit from people staying in the app, not partnered up stably. If the app only showed people they'd have the best longer-term prospects with, then it would likely show people in their attractiveness range as a rule.

[intrasight]

A better, and tried and true solution, is ...

Alcohol. Helping ugly people reproduce for 10,000 years.

[Sai_]

Funnier cos alcohol as a beverage is a solution in the chemical sense.

[The_Colonel]

Drinking alcohol at home doesn't help.

It's likely the going out (and then drink alcohol) which helps. And people nowadays don't go out a lot.

[realusername]

> There's a bit of kayfabe going on; users want to think the other users of online dating are 8+/10, sexy, flirty, fun, and desirable singles.

I'd go a bit further than that, people are explicitly looking for that different reality when opening the app.

That's one of the reasons of getting the app to them, getting better matches than in the reality.

I don't think it's a solvable problem, online dating is just full of paradox, the paradox highlighted in the article is real but this is another one on top of that.

[watwut]

Average American is not ugly and I mean it 100% seriously. Moreover, average American is as ugly offline as online.

[jessriedel]

> "online dating is only for the ugly and desperate"; the article points out that this is the way Gen Z perceives online dating already.

The article notes that Gen Z usage of dating apps is down, but it's not clear to me it's because they think it's low status. (Polo is unpopular, but it's high status.) Do you have more info on why Gen Z isn't using dating apps? It being low status is certainly possible, but lower over all interest in romance is too; Gen Z is famously having less sex.

I followed the "failing to woo Generation Z" link, and just got this PDF, which didn't help much: https://www.generationlab.org/_files/ugd/b2ee84_c2430c8256ff... (College students are using dating apps less than post-college 20-somethings, but I think that's always been true.)

[morbicer]

I think it's pretty simple - Gen Z are young and have better opportunity to date IRL. They are surrounded by many peers, have more free time and friend circles are still strong.

As people grow older, they have more obligations, they sometimes move away from where they were raised thus breaking away from friends, they generally hang out in less homogenous age bracket.

I bet Gen Z will get on dating apps in their 30s.

[jessriedel]

I believe the claim is that Gen Z uses dating apps less when controlling for age than their predecessors. (I don't have the data to tell whether that's true.)

[zarzavat]

When people say Gen Z are they talking about Gen Z in America or Gen Z on Earth? I notice many qualities ascribed to Gen Z seem to be completely alien to Gen Z where I live which makes me suspect that these qualities are simply random variation and correlation hunting, and not inherent to that cohort’s formative experiences (smartphones, covid, etc).

[jessriedel]

Most of this discussion is about America, I think.