[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.

[hbn]

What if I stopped showering and women found me unattractive for it? And I started blaming them, saying it’s their fault I can’t bring myself to shower?

[Spivak]

You're ignoring the magnitude. To make this a fair comparison it would have to be something like

"Women find men's musk so repulsive that men who struggle with controlling it due to their hormones, diet, or lifestyle are showering with so much chemical exfoliant to keep it under control that it's destroying their skin."

And in that world I think you have a case that women have to get over it.

You can be like "just lose weight" up to the point where it drives a super-majority of women have an unhealthy relationship with food and starve themselves to do it. It looks like the new weight loss drugs might finally just fix the problem in a way that satisfies everyone. I have an ED and I will be so happy if I live to see generation of women who don't ruin their mental health to chase the thinness expected of us -- but it still sucks that the solution is drugging women to lose weight and not growing to find "heavier" (i.e. women with a BMI higher than 20) women attractive.

[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.