This is the most chilling thing I've read in a while.
Time spent thumbing through selfies on a dating app on a 2.5" by 5" screen, is less effective ( from a sexually reproductive standpoint ) than going up and introducing yourself to members of the opposite sex. But then again, we can throw any biological theories of evolution out the windows, because you're more than likely using contraceptives at any rate.
1. You gotta be pretty photogenic. This is a very strange one because I find more people more attractive in real life than in photos. The people who do look appealing in photos tend to have more angular faces and better proportions, but honestly in the end what matters most is how we look in real life.
2. You’re at an advantage if you’re extroverted and have pictures of you attending many social events. A good number of “friends” that you randomly hang out with helps too.
3. If you want to stand out, you better hope you have a close friend who is at least a hobby level photographer and goes out to most places with you.
Yea, I’m screwed. I never prepared myself to have an outstanding social presence, and it’s too late at this point.
I met the love of my life last year, on email.
But there are obviously more efficient ways to meet people who may be interested in you.
If two people are out on a first date who met over WoW, they probably have better long term chances than people who met on a real dating site. (Admittedly, people who met on Tinder might have excellent chances of getting what they want; assuming that's nothing to do with the long term).
My partner and I met via Tinder after both of us had cycled through a lot of dates, and we catch ourselves saying "god damn are we lucky" over and over and over again. They say you make your own luck by increasing your surface area, yea?
Sometimes, I wonder if the whole "we got lucky," thing was just that they did get lucky, but only for long enough to bootstrap them into having spent enough time around each other to get attached. My experience of human nature is that everyone is actually really, really close to the same once you get to know them.
I don't think that follows, because people adjust to the improved situation[1][2]. To take a case where the gains are pretty undeniable, nobody celebrates regularly that they are much less likely to get polio or some other disease that used to be much more common. We just adjust to the new reality, and keep complaining about the diseases we do get today.
>But only long enough to bootstrap into having spent enough time around each other to get attached
Yea, in my experience that's how a huge swath of relationships usually work, especially for people who haven't been in many relationships or who have big enough relationship gaps that they feel the need to cling. People getting caught in relationships that aren't all that great but "hey, wtf else are we gonna do, at least we aren't tearing each other's throats out, right? Maybe having a baby will help us love each other." We've all seen it, many of us have lived it.
I'm arguing that the proliferation of dating apps is helping that go away. Either because a highly specialized interests based site like OkCupid lets you zero in on quite nearly the perfect partner, or because you can shotgun across a zero cost app like tinder, you're far more likely to find an actual meaningful relationship.
For the record, I know there's a higher tier of relationship than "familiarity breeds love" due to personal experience.
Just as there is a dozen of hyperactive “technology” subreddits and I don’t know what’s the equivalent on facebook (communities), but we’re still discussing it on HN.
I feel apps or websites which are exclusive to dating have something weird about them.
Facebook tries to become the kitchen sink of the internet, like that company from China.
But that's not to say this won't do well. It probably will.