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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33357 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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we might have to try 100 times

Far easier to do it at industrial scale these days, though. I managed to go on first dates with 50 different women last year in a mid-sized metro, all from the strength of polite conversation on an app. I'm fairly sure the vast majority of my forefathers wouldn't have met 50 'viable' women (Not that the majority of that 50 turned out to be viable after a first date) in a lifetime of living in a small agrarian village.

What % of those 50 were viable?

Of those who weren't, what were the common reasons?

I'd say 3 or 4 where I had instantaneous 'I would marry this woman' vibes, probably 15ish where I was like down for a second date. Still ticking with some of those.

I started from a pretty low place in terms of attractiveness so a lot of the early ones were just dealing with some combination of obesity, weak English skills (very multicultural society) or lack of a real lifepath which spaced them.

Jesus, I thought I was a man slut for dating (on average) a new woman every month before covid. Why did you hook up new dates when you found women you would marry? Pursue one of them! You might be married by now if you had slowed down a bit, they probably sensed you were playing the field!

First 30 or so were during a rapid weightloss/self-improvement phase and it was more about getting through dating anxiety through exposure therapy. Very few actual leads in there.

Still going with one or two of the strong vibe ones, but online dating people are super flaky.

Aha, well in that case well done! Very well done, I hope you are proud of yourself.

But this honestly just implies GREATER COMPETITION.

If it's easier to do it, more people are going to try and thus the red-queen-race effect is that everyone is putting in more effort, and yet is less likely to stand out.

It's not the kind of industrial scale that is producing more viable matches/relationships, it is apparently just forcing everyone to make more attempts for comparatively fewer results.

Now, if the apps were better at sorting people towards those they are likely to click with rather than trying to addict people to the dopamine hit of "maybe this next person is THE ONE" swiping, it'd be different. but maximizing throughput is not the same as improving everyone's odds.

True, and it's multi-faceted.

The girls I met who I was super-enthused about probably saw me as being towards the lower end of their prospects (assuming that attractiveness is the same for everybody), thereby creating a mismatch.

Like if I'm a Male 6/10 who's getting normally distributed dates at an average of say a Female 4.5/10 (since inherent gender gap), I'm gonna look like a great prospect to my 3/10's who I'm not gonna want and I'm gonna see the fellow occasional 6/10 as a great lead but not get the same enthusiasm in return since their dating range will have some 8/10's.

Makes me wonder if the solution is to ban apps which rely on self selection and mass exposure to all other users.

And get the guys who design the trading engines for major stock exchanges to set up apps that are solely designed to match people of similar 'market value' and completely exclude users from even seeing others' profiles where the mismatch/price spread is too great, so people are only getting matched with those who are similarly 'priced' and thus actually willing to 'trade' for a dating relationship with that person.

This is a function that matchmakers perform, but that's usually expensive and doesn't scale as well.

I think the issue is the intergender mismatch and the casual sex thing that stops direct alignment.

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