A picture really is worth a thousand words. There's a lot you can learn from a picture. Often enough to say "You don't seem like my type."

If I don't want kids, I won't swipe on a picture with kids. I'll rule out somebody whose picture is doing shots with friends in a bar. Conversely, if a photo has a bookshelf, I'm certainly going to take a closer look.

The filtering happens at some point. There are thousands of women there and I don't have time to chat with all of them. I swipe the ones I think I have something to talk about with. Your photo conveys your personality, and people who put time into selecting a photo that gives me something to talk about are attractive to me.

Or that photo conveys awareness of how it all works and it's a fake filter. Having a bookshelf behind you doesn't mean that you've read it and vice versa. Same for shots in a bar, which may happen one time in few months or years even. Photos do not speak, unfortunately.

I know a girl who travels often. When we occasionally spoke about India and pictures she took there, her comments were like "I've seen this and that". It was ok, but I couldn't get rid of a feeling that I know an order of magnitude more about India from a basic (well, a more like a good hist-pop) history channel alone. It was boring and un-deep at the level of scrolling google images.

It's in their best interest to put up a photo that portrays them honestly. If they haven't read any of those books, it'll be immediately obvious, and they've wasted their own time. If they never do shots in a bar, but put up a photo of the one time they did that, it still tells me something about what they think is special and how they see themselves.

It's not perfect. It's not meant to be. It's a heuristic that still leaves plenty of people to talk to for the second pass, and that lets me spend enough brain power to present myself well while we decide if we should meet in person.

"Surely makes sense to be open to meet as many people as possible?"

Tell me that after a dozen awkward first dates! The more particular I have become about finding new people to go out with, the better the quality of my dates. Now, I usually feel more or less certain I'll at least get along with the person. And yeah, I missed out on another dozen potential dates, some of which probably would also be good matches, but many surely would not be.

Going from a 60% swipe rate to a 5% swipe rate doesn't mean going from a dozen awkward dates a month to one good date a month. It means going from one or two awkward dates per month to zero dates per month.

If I am so undateable, or women as a class are so undateable, then I would put my effort into finding some alternative view of my life that doesn't put so much of my self-worth on finding an opposite-sex partner.

Personally, I've found that women aren't nearly so obsessive about wealth, looks, etc. as is constantly claimed in HN threads. More than anything they seem to want a good partner, somebody who understands them, and is kind, considerate, thoughtful, and interesting.

When I see posts declaring that women are, as a class, only interested in a tiny percentage of men, that suggests to me that those men aren't very good at being kind, considerate, thoughtful, and interesting. Which is too bad, because those are fairly easy things to achieve, and shouldn't be the bar to a relationship.

There are lots and lots of other things that get in the way of relationships. Those are hard things, and require a lot of picking through people to find a pair that is able to work on hard things together. That will fail right off the bat if they can't do the easy things.

Women want the best 5%. If you are not in that group go to a smaller room.

Indeed. Women want the best 5% from the available pool. If you're not in the top 5% on Tinder, go find a smaller and more selective pool and you'll do fine.

Also, Tinder has a very specific age demographic which skews younger - which is when women are most desirable. Women start having a harder time once they reach 35, and a nearly impossible time when they reach 50.

And yet, more people meet online than any other way in 2020. So which “pool” should I go to?

One that's not online.

How do you think that translates to the context of online dating?

There are no rooms, just 1-1 matches.

You can't stand out more by swiping less, can you? Your best strategy is always simple to swipe as much as possible (until the algorithm punishes you for doing that.)

Go use a smaller app or a smaller dating site.

Is tinderthe only site you use ? Why not go more niche. Are you Jewish, Christian, plenty of sites can be found. Are you into a specific sexual preference or gender? Plenty of sites around those...

This discussion wasn't about which site to use, it was about when you're on a given site, how much does it make sense to swipe.

And the only logical answer is to swipe as much as possible. Moving to another app doesn't change that.

That's not logical that's thinking linearly. What are you even swiping at if you are swiping at everything?

You control the words in your profile, your picture. Want a gothic girl make your profile and pic match. Swipe only on goths profiles.

When you try to be everything you become nothing.

I think you're missing the point. The disparity in match rates is such that most men are not able to get matches while being selective. If he only swipes on goth profiles, he'll get no matches unless he's incredibly lucky. Between swiping selectively and having a high probability of zero matches, and swiping liberally and having a good probability of getting at least a few matches I'm not surprised most men choose the latter.

If he isn't targeting a group his odds are 5%. By hyper targetting those odds could be much higher

Randomly adding private ig profiles as a male probably has a 1-3% chance of success but as a good looking female that number probably jumps to 15%+. But if he was a goth had interesting goth photos that person will identify with him and add him.

Swiping everyone is just like emailing every company your resume. Spend sometime craft your profile and target who you want.

Want a ton more matches? Post a pic of your cat as your picture. Women may not find you interesting but many will want to meet your cat.

Why do you think a narrow search is any more likely to result in a match? The other party does not know who else you swipe right on. Narrowing a search does not yield an increase in match rates.

Bob is interested in goth women. There's 5 of them in his area. Plus another 95 non-goth women. If he accepts only the 5 goth women, he might get lucky and get a match but at 1-3% change of matching he's still likely to have zero matches. But if he swipes right on all 100 women his chances of having at lease a couple matches goes up drastically, and the 5 goth women he's especially interested are no less likely to match with him.

Sure, taking better pictures and working out to become more attractive increases the likelihood of matching. If Bob hits the gym, gets some professional photos taken, and crafts a better profile his match rate with those 5 goth women will increase. But his chances also increase for the other 95 women, and he has no reason to refrain from swiping right on them.

> Swiping everyone is just like emailing every company your resume. Spend sometime craft your profile and target who you want.

Yes! When you're job searching there's no reason to limit your job search. Yes, you should craft your resume and cover letter to emphasize the skills the company is looking for. But you're still strictly better off applying to 100 companies as compared to 10 companies. Online dating is no different.

In fact I was job searching not long ago and I applied to ~50 companies a day. Why not apply to a company I'm only lukewarm about? If it turns out I don't like the company I can just not schedule an interview. Or do the interview anyway, and use a potential offer as leverage in negotiating.

Do you really want those 95 other women? If you ended up out with one of those other girls and a goth girl swipes back and you miss that opportunity are you still happy. Plus you waste an evening to beef up your goth profile to attract all 5. You could be using the time to research what areas have more goths and move.

If you want any girl, swipe everyone. In that case why not use the money you were planning on impressing this girl and just hire a girl for the evening. Your odds/costs will be less and relationship prospects about the same.

Let's say you swipe, find success and meet this person. Getting to that hook up finish will take much more legwork compared to if you are prequalified.

For job prospectives I find if I do that (apply to every job) you end up wasting a lot of time and energy in low chance opportunities or high chance but low quality opportunities. It worked when I first started but didn't work out so well after 15 years of experience.

If one of those goth girls Bob is into ends up matching with him, he can still go out with her even if several of the other 95 women match with him.

If some of the low quality companies respond to you, you can always turn them down in favor of the companies you're most interested in if they respond.

I'm not sure what I'm failing to explain. It's strictly better to do a broader search. Save for the time it takes to apply. But in the case of both online dating and applying to jobs it's not that much work to apply even with a customized cover letter. You're selecting from the subset of people who respond to your initial application - or swipe. The more applications you send the bigger this subset will be.

You are explaining your point well. You would be happy with any of the 100. In that case your strategy of swipe all makes sense.

But if you want to increase your successful swipe % rate within a target group a different strategy of profile management is in order.

I believe the targeted approach is more successful for repeated interactions and perhaps a relationship where the swipe all approach would get higher numbers with more low quality matches.

The job conversation is a bigger discussion. Spending a day on a cover letter, custom sample application, researching history and changing your resume to fit each job takes time but also provides a lot of value when trying to form a connection in the interview.

Sure, if narrowing the set of people you accept increases your match rate this strategy makes sense. But it's not the case in most online dating. The subset of people you're interested in are individuals, who all have different tastes. You can't show different profiles to different people, so a targeted approach is not feasible. Those 5 goth girls Bob is interested in like different types of men.

Likewise, spending a day on crafting a cover letter and resume is a waste of time. A customized cover letter and resume probably takes 15-30 minutes, tops. Why are you worried about forming a connection in an interview when you don't even have an interview yet? Spend a day researching the company in depth once you have an interview scheduled.

One thing women absolutely do not want are men who make sweeping generalizations about all women, based on no evidence or compelling arguments.

And women out of hand rejecting more than 95% of all males sends what message exactly? That’s not a sweeping generalisation of men?

It could be that women don't want the "top 5%", but rather are seeking men who are simply acceptable, who don't exude misogynistic tendencies, who bother to groom themselves, who treat others with respect. A tall order, considering most men are trash, including the good-looking ones.

I strongly agree. Some might call the comment sexist, and inherently it is so, but that misses the point.

The point is we live in a society that is male dominated (sexist) and it has unpleasant effects on socialization which leaves many "normal" men to be problematic (or as you put it, "trash").

What about other women?