It's not survivorship bias if you failed 100 times before your 1 success. It's only survivorship bias if they hit the jackpot and the very first date worked out perfectly and they lived happily ever after.

I was grinding away on tinder/going on dates for months before I found success. But that's not the dating app's fault - I was seeing the same thing using non-app strategies.

Survivorship bias is anyone who has had success at a task, regardless of how long it took. The lottery winner who played every week for 40 years will tell you buying a ticket every week is the secret to success at winning, irrespective of the millions of people who do that and never win.

So the grandparent comment did use the term correctly. Unless they were responding to someone who never “won” at the dating game.

The ultimate statistical issue is about the outcome of a task biasing the incentive for testifying about the task. It’s usually winners who are more prone to speak to their approach to the problem than losers, so we don’t know if the winning solution is representative of success or an aberration from the norm.

> Survivorship bias is anyone who has had success at a task, regardless of how long it took.

I don't believe that. It depends on the task and how much of it is chance vs. skill. Winning the lotto is literally 100% chance, 0% skill. Odds are worse than 1 in a million, so yes, I agree with your assertion that a lotto winner who played for 40 years and finally won is exhibiting survivorship bias if they claim the key to winning is playing every week.

However, if I have a goal to run a 6 minute mile, and I fail 100 times before I finally succeed. Does that mean I have survivorship bias if I say that I found running a little faster every day and not giving up to be the key to success?

Dating does have an element of chance, yes, but it also has an element of skill - you get better social skills the more you use them. It's a bit disingenuous to compare "the dating game" (which billions of people "win" every year) to lotto (which probably < 100 people win per year).

If I had to start the dating game all over knowing what I know now, I'm confident I could find a wife much faster than my first time around - especially with the help of online dating apps. I'm older and wiser and I understand females now way better than I did when I started out.

I like how "a year" and "months" is mentioned as if either one is a particularly long time. Many people go their entire lives without ever managing to find a compatible partner.

I met a couple of interesting people over the years on OkCupid and Meetic. Three, total. Over nine years. I dated one of them briefly, made excellent friends with another.

I ended up in a now-ended relationship with someone I met in an online forum, and now in a very happy relationship with someone I met at a board game Meetup.

Dating sites made me feel miserable when I used them. Constantly fruitless, frustrating. Any success I've had with them is survivorship bias.

This shouldn't be a numbers game. The fact that it is exacerbates the "inbox bloat" attractive people get.

> This shouldn't be a numbers game

This is almost exactly how it is in real life though. The more people you approach for a date -> the more chances you might have. And forget actual dating apps - people are using regular social media like Instagram to "meet" people too.

So you met your wife after a year and call the whole thing a failure?

What I'm saying is a might as well have dated random people for a year, it would have been the same result. The dating sites sell you on 'matching.'

Oh, and if you think you're using it for free, think again. They are collecting all kinds of personal information about you

> What I'm saying is a might as well have dated random people for a year, it would have been the same result. The dating sites sell you on 'matching.'

Dating apps sell you on showing you more people you otherwise would never meet. The chemistry and "good match" are left to the two people to figure out via chatting and a date.

I think this is the right attitude (and correct description), but not everyone understands this. I have a friend who finally started using dating apps after I've pressured him for years. From my view, he is a decent guy who is reasonably good looking, but had no luck getting dates the "old fashioned way". He hasn't had any serious relationships success (i.e. anything greater then 6 months), but he is actually getting dates now. He still complains about the "quality" of the dates, but I honestly think a dating app can only match you based on so much, and from there you have to take over the work.

> I have a friend who finally started using dating apps after I've pressured him for years.

Dear God why would you do this to someone?

If the friend expressed that he wants to date, pressure/suggest dating apps make sense.

If that is not the case I agree with you.

Loneliness sucks, and for some people it can be difficult to try to meet new people in “real-world” social interactions.

I'm one of those people, but dating apps only ever made things worse. I can't imagine why anyone would want to use them unless they literally could not live with being alone. Fortunately for me I have decades of experience at that.

> I can't imagine why anyone would want to use them

I'll tell you why: Why be content only meeting the subset of women I can meet face-to-face in my free time when I can complement my social life with a dating app that helps me meet more?

I can do both.

I can only understand your confusion if you have zero success on dating apps and assume nobody else has any success, either. And there are people obviously having success on dating apps.

> Why be content only meeting the subset of women I can meet face-to-face in my free time when I can complement my social life with a dating app that helps me meet more?

Show me the data that says meeting many more potential partners leads to happier more fulfilling relationships, because I certainly haven't seen it.

Yeah, my attitude was always that I could filter out “definitely no” in the app, but there’s no way to tell a “maybe” from a “hell yes” until you meet in person.

Only OkCupid does; Tinder barely tries and even then it's hidden. For the most part the selling point is that you get introduced to people you wouldn't just meet in your normal social cirlces/events. Apps besides OkCupid have mostly moved to the model where you put in a few basic facts (age/sex, do you drink, etc), upload some pictures, a short (< 500 characters in Tinder) text blob, and off you go swiping. There's no attempt to match you on interests let alone any deeper compatibility metrics.

Also on the data collection front, the business model is more based around advertising, and just knowing you're single is all the info they need. They can bombard you with ads for events to go to, clothes to wear, etc. You're the most lucrative market if you're 18-35 and single.

Actually, they do try to match you on attractiveness. Also how much you swipe. If you swipe to like every profile you get different results.

This is what I meant by "barely". It still makes no effort to actually look for compatibility.

Don't most people use dating apps to essentially "randomly meet people"? My impression is that the dating app is simply a relatively new "place" to "randomly meet people." It's basically just like any other place to randomly meet people, like church, a hobby, a bar, a party, etc.

well, when using these sites/apps, people have different motivations. some are fairly short term (exotic weekend abroad, want a romantic experience on top). some just want to meet new people. some want to find whatever love means to them. some people are bored and want attention from people.

it sounds like you wanted to find a long term/partner for kids/etc. type thing. that's fine, just realize not everyone on these sites/apps are looking for that, and there's no motivation to give you that bc your value to them ends when you're off the platform.

Seems like it worked? Most people don't find anyone to be in an actual relationship with.

> I met my wife online after a year of fruitless first dates.

If you found them all to be so fruitless, never enjoying yourself at all, then yes that does sound kind of unappealing. Sorry to come in here and bust your chops while knowing nothing about you :) But shouldn't dating be enjoyable?

While it could have been stated more delicately, there is, in my experience, truth in the statement as I have found that enjoyment and success (for whatever subjective definition of the word in this context) in dating has largely been dependent on my own attitude at the time, and less with the way I met the other person.

Why was it miserable?

My personal experience is that dating itself just a miserable, tedious affair. Online dating at best doesn't make it any better.

Dating is only as miserable and tedious as you want to make it. If you're not satisfied with results so far then change your approach. This may require multiple iterations over several years until you find something that works for you.

Been there, done that, decided it wasn't worth the continued effort.

This isn't the first time I've seen you in dating-related threads, I recognize the username since it makes me chuckle (aren't we all?).

If you've given up the game, and I can certainly empathize -- it's a real crapshoot --, why do you feel the need to share such a strong opinion in these types of threads as if nobody else is having any luck in the dating world? Isn't this obviously a personal problem?

In case someone out there is in a similar situation and might be afraid to just let go. There's a lot of societal pressure built up around coupling, but the truth is that for a lot of people it really isn't worth it and the effort only makes our lives worse. I guess I'm trying to show that it's ok, they're not alone, and it isn't really a big deal.

Over and over I got excited that I was going to meet a person who ostensibly had a lot in common with me, and it just never was the case. I also continually got the same search results all year.

It's hardly fair to blame the dating service for your unrealistic expectations. Having a lot in common isn't a sound basis for a relationship. Most first dates never turn into anything; that's always been the case and it's just how humans work.

It's not surprising that you got the same results all year. The matching algorithms don't change very quickly.

Yeah, I know more about my compatibility with someone after talking with them for a few minutes that I do from reading a perfect list of their interests and opinions.

It's why we date instead of picking our spouse from an Excel spreadsheet.

Dating apps cannot fix this, but they can make it easier to meet more people.

I thought a great take on this was the Black Mirror episode where your dating-app compatibility score with someone was the percentage of times your virtual clone escapes the simulation with them. How else can you predict chemistry?