The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't mean to defend dating apps but I suspect that there's a little bit of selection bias. I expect the type of men who enjoy making data visualizations not to have great prospects on the dating market. Also if you really enjoy data visualization but you find the perfect match on the first try, you'll probably make data visualizations about something else.
I would almost suspect some of these guys to subconsciously shoot themselves in the foot because they're too busy thinking about collecting data and organizing it instead of putting their best effort into optimizing their profile, making conversation and enjoying the date.
There have been quite a few experiments by data visualizer-types who allegedly set up a fake profile with male model pictures and raked in matches by the dozen. I don't recall any that were published somewhere more respectable than 4chan, though.
Also, it's always "top 1% male model" fake profiles, I'd be more interested in seeing how well someone closer to top 10% does.
You can't publish those types of experiments anywhere else because you'd be drowned in an endless sea of insults and strawmen.
More options
Context Copy link
I remember a particularly hilarious example where they used a picture of a model and a bio that straight up confessed to being a convicted pedophile who can't get close to schools.
And they were still getting matches. And the women were thirsty even though the fake user kept reiterating the point. As someone with a far more handsome brother, I should have seen this coming, but still, bruh.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It’s this and only swiping on women more attractive than they are. You could be an average guy perfectly capable of finding a date on Tinder or whatever, but if you only swipe on beautiful women it’s plausible you could go a very large number of matches before getting reciprocated.
The male strategy used to be to match every single woman and then go through the dozen of matches and decide which ones are worth your time.
In the past few years it seems that they tweaked the algorithm to stratify users.
This is what I think happens now: on the first day they show all the women, including the most attractive ones, but if the swiping has a low match ratio, they stop showing them. The user gets ranked among low match ratio users and it's basically over for them. I think they may be able to buy premium options after that.
More options
Context Copy link
I swipe on women more aesthetically appealing than I am. And that works fine, if you have other qualities that make up for it, which I do. It's worked for me in the past, and works fine now.
Most men are frankly terrible at making profiles and selling themselves. As @4bpp claims, I can corroborate that the original OKC researchers found that men rate women on a normal curve, whereas women rate most men as "below average" in terms of looks. They're just far more picky.*
And dating apps break the cycle of assortative mating too, with a small number of very hot guys having anywhere from supermodels to average women clamoring for them.
*Too drunk to chase down links. But we've seen the same blogs.
This is a misunderstanding of female sexuality. It is true that many average women could find a hot guy to hook up with on Tinder. But it’s also interesting that comparatively few women do this, certainly with any regularity. Many women I know have never had a one-night stand. If they find themselves in ambiguous ‘situationships’, it’s typically with men they’ve met in real life. The fact that they could fuck a guy with a six pack in an hour via Tinder holds no appeal to the average woman, whatever her hotness.
It is a projection of male sexuality onto women. Men, if they could have NSA sex with hot women out of their league via the apps would be doing it every single day, at lunch, after dropping grandma off at the grocery store, whatever. And indeed this is how a lot of gay men’s sexuality works, it’s why Grindr is proximity-based, because it really is about finding the nearest guy you want to fuck right now as soon as possible.
This also ties into the general phenomenon of men driving themselves crazy trying to attract the small minority of highly promiscuous women (who, sure, are going to be pretty superficial) and then extrapolating their behaviour to everyone else.
There are no large dating apps/sites for non-superficial people. So probably non-promiscuous women are about as superficial as promiscuous.
More options
Context Copy link
Dating apps, in general, attempt to service two separate yet overlapping sets of users:
People looking to hook up. These are far more likely to be men, no doubt about it.
People looking for a steady relationship. I would imagine that this is nearly equal.
This is not a paradox when you understand that both userbases overlap.
Men do want more flings than women, as you've stated. However, only the hottest of them will find steady success, and it's a winner take all field. Or most, at least. The women who want flings will obviously desire them with the most attractive men around. Said men are usually happy to oblige, and service the entire market while the rest standby dicks wagging in the cold breeze.
When it comes to steady relationships, there are certainly women who don't opt for flings. They're also still going to try and get the best possible guy they can, and will eventually, through repeated rejection if nothing else, find someone of equivalent Sexual Market Value (an ill defined but still useful term).
I hardly blame them. Everyone is acting according to their incentives.
Unfortunately, said incentive systems are simply not built for the scenario they find themselves in, which is an endless gamut of people to flick through on a whim.
Well, while I sincerely doubt I know the women you know, none of this is a surprise to me.
I'm not speaking about all women. I'm talking about the women (and men) who are using dating apps. Which now hold the preponderance of the market, in terms of where people try and find people to fuck, marry
kill.I'm not a red-pilled PUA, I'm not dismissing all women as inconsiderate, or delusional. You'll just find more of them on Tinder. After all, both the women and men on dating apps are being selected from the set that isn't doing shit outside (mostly).
After all, people do meet IRL, or through friends of friends, which has the benefit of a great deal of vetting and sanity checking, and an implicit belief that the two of them are fit for each other. This is how things were done before (and even Indian arranged marriages are closer to family-vetted serious dating), but it's being devoured by the monster that is online dating.
A few men swallow up the entire market for female sexual promiscuity (again, not all women, not even most of them, for most of the time, but when they crave it).
Men are unhappy because they feel ignored and undervalued. Women are unhappy because the guys they're able to sleep with won't commit to them. This isn't a particularly original observation, but it's still true.
I'm just lucky in some ways, fuck, if I wasn't tall, or a doctor, or (list of attractive traits), there but for the grace of God go I. I certainly empathize more with the men, but having seen some of the pathetic shit guys try, I feel for the women too. Few people are happy about how it works.
I would much prefer to date in real life, but I'm lazy and rather busy. And that's easier said than done for a working professional. Especially one who intends to emigrate sooner or later. Hence the apps it is.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What's the attractivity metric here? If we define it in terms of absolute attractivity to the other sex, in the below-40 bracket most women are more attractive than the median guy (see also those OkCupid blog men-rating-women/women-rating-men charts). I'm not so sure that the "swiping on women more attractive than they are" thing is true if the rating is on the curve for their respective sex.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link