Anybody else remember the data blog posts? Those were interesting and satisfying. It was another confirmation that I'd found the right dating site and probably a like-minded userbase.

Particularly the one that was a tare-down of why paid dating sites like match.com where a mug's game for almost everyone. That somehow went AWOL fairly soon after the match.com take-over…

This one, Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135309/http://blog.okcupi...

Very much sounds like the one. Can't double-check ATM as network I'm on blocks archive.org.

I fondly remember the one that showed men's rating of women approaching almost a perfect normal distribution, and then the men messaging mostly the hot ones anyway, whereas the women rated most men as ugly and then sloping downward toward very few as good looking, kind of like an exponential distribution, but that they also messaged the men almost exactly in tandem - uglier getting the most, with a steady drop as men's ranking rose.

This is basically the foundation of modern, online dating -- aka red pill. Roughly, the top 20% of men get 80% of the attention from women. (I'm pretty sure that figure comes from Tinder data.) It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, but is brutal in the real world. What do you do if you are average (or less) in looks and income (potential)? Prepare for a lonely existance.

You’re being downvoted, but that’s pretty well supported with data. In fact it’s more skewed than 20/80. Closer to 10/90.

They're being downvoted because the very comment they're replying to contradicts it: "but that they also messaged the men almost exactly in tandem - uglier getting the most, with a steady drop as men's ranking rose.

OKCupid's own data showed that women rate men is ugly but message them anyway.

Isn’t the parent comment saying the opposite of this? That despite rating most men as ugly, it didn’t affect their messaging behavior nearly as much?

No, they are saying a bit tangential things.

Tinder's data shows "chance of approach", which is brutal for men who are not too good looking.

IIRC, OkCupid's data shows a bit different thing. The distribution of ratings determines chance of messages/likes - the larger stddev the better chances. IIRC, the most messaged men were ones with ratings characterized by bimodal distribution. Therefore, the most messaged men were not the ones with highest visual rating. I do not recall the distribution of messages, so can't comment much on that.

Just read the original article[0]. I apologize if I misstated anything in it.

[0]http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135309/http://blog.okcupi...

That data had poor epistemology, and was only really true if you're only looking at cishet monogamous men and cishet monogamous women.

>What do you do if you are average (or less) in looks and income (potential)? Prepare for a lonely existance.

You try to improve these things. Going to the gym etc, or focusing on one's career is a start.

There's a lot about redpill culture that is inexcusably execrable, but it does offer a true and practical answer to the question you have posed: do everything in your power to make yourself more attractive. Work out, get a good haircut, improve your wardrobe, develop your career, improve your social/conversation skills, have interesting hobbies. Become the best version of yourself and you will get more attention from others.

Online dating isn't a real world thing.

You want easy women? Go get a working class job that is predominantley women. Date foreigners. Go to a festival, hang out with hippies, ect.

I have no idea why men put themselves online and then complain it's a stacked deck. One of the greatest facts about real world dating is, you don't have to be the hottest guy on tinder, just the hottest guy in the room (or her mind) that night.

If Tinder sucks, get off it, women will follow when they realise the top 20% of guys dont service 80% of women.

Walk away.

Frankly the bit about dating that bothers me is that women are way too forward and pushy. Instant 'attention' is such a turn off, I cannot wait until women are more demoralized.

I was raised to pursue women, to hunt/chase for something worth getting. Women are constantly ready-to-go, a repetitive temptation and it's a constant turn off. Give me something to imagine, a skirt to chase, an air of mystery, or try and get to know me before it's "straight to the bedroom".

I don't like women as they commonly are in my experience, right now. I don't recognize them as the women I grew up with. They're just sex bots.

Well this is the most toxic thing I’ve read today.

Ha. That was the most 4chan thing I've ever read that wasn't on 4chan.

Online dating is skewed because you have no way to know what someone is really like. All you get is a picture (which may have been photoshopped), and profile data (they might be lieing. If you do date someone you want them to look good because at least if the night was a bust you got to look at someone hot.

Nope, not really, not only it makes zero sense from evolutionary perspective (especially that of humans), but it also is very specific to one specific platform, and very much determined on the way it is structured and its target audience, business model, etc.

I remember reading that analysis at the time and thinking it was flawed.

What it didn't seem to account for was if you rated someone high enough (I can't remember if it required 4 or 5 stars), OKCupid would notify the person in question that you had done so. If you didn't want these notifications being fired off you had to adjust your ratings accordingly - now 3 stars is the highest rating you are going to give.

I think the stats really just ended up reflecting that men were generally more comfortable having their ratings broadcast than women were.

The main effect of those data posts seems to have been to cause people to spread a lot of misinfo like "women aren't attracted to 80% of men".

(What they actually said was that women rate men much lower than men rate women, but the women still respond the same way despite rating them lower, so it doesn't mean anything.)

Information has gotten harder and harder to come by as the Internet has matured. Think how much Tinder, Twitter, and Hinge know about human flirting and attraction. I believe it's just too black pilled to see the light of day.

This was a good one [0]:

> When men message women, women tend to respond most often to men around their own ages. But when women message men, they’re actually more likely to get a response from younger men than they are from older ones. A 40-year-old woman will have better luck messaging a 25-year-old man than a 55-year-old one, according to the data. And a 30-year-old man is more likely to respond to a message from a 50-year-old woman than a message from any other age group. When women make the first move, the age gap dating norm is reversed.

[0] https://theblog.okcupid.com/undressed-whats-the-deal-with-th...

I also met my wife on okcupid. I wonder how many of us their are.

I'd be curious if you're all over 6' tall. I never had any luck on OKCupid.

That height fetish stuff is the domain of 5'0" white women. Basically message taller women and it doesn't matter.

Nope. It's not specific to their height and obviously not specific to their race.

The same way men on average prefer big boobs, women on average will prefer taller men. Both can't really be changed by the person but exist as attractiveness scores against a person.

It matters to people who it matters to. Not many in the grand scheme and definitely not related to race.

> It's not specific to their height

Of course it is because it's relative to how tall they are. But taller women already don't expect you to tower over them, because that's hard to find, so it's ok if you don't.

> and obviously not specific to their race.

It is within a specific ethnicity and generation. If you're in a country where the men in a specific age are short because food was scarce 2-3 decades ago, they're not all single because their women aren't attracted to them.

And depending on culture, it matters more what impresses their parents, which is being a doctor-lawyer-astronaut who owns a house.

No it's not. There is always a taller person and shorter people.

Thinking someone thinks a certain way based on their height is weird and wrong.

You are reading way too far into this and your take is incredibly wrong, not to mention racist.

"No woman will ever like you unless you're 6'" is the take that's reading way too far into dating.

Yes, it's also bad like yours.

I have literally not once in my entire life heard a woman in real life say 'oh he's so tall, that's so attractive'. That's only an internet thing. Or an outside-Western Europe thing, maybe.

How people act is often different from how they say they act. Women can be attracted to taller men without knowing that is a factor much less admitting it.

I have no idea if women really are attracted to taller men, but I know what you hear people say isn't the whole truth either.

No but, I've seen plenty of women say: I want to wear heels and still have my man be taller than me when we are dancing.

As a short man, I have heard height directly or indirectly referenced as a point of attraction more times than I can count. I’ve even had women say literally to my face I wasn’t tall enough for them.

I’m glad you haven’t had that experience. Doesn’t discount that it’s a real thing.

I remember hearing the founder of The League dating app talk about her platform, back when she was first starting out. She said it was so that women could be assured they were dating men who were in fact (1) well-educated (the name is a nod to the Ivy League), (2) made good money, and (3) were tall. The way she talked about the latter sounded a bit anti-Asian, to be honest.

Have you never heard "he has nice teeth and his arm pit doesn't stink" too? Because that's also another reason women find men attractive, they smell nice and have good teeth. Obviously we don't announce all our instincts.

This is where we could really use some empirical data to better understand these topics.

Comments already devolving into "Yes it matters!" "No it doesn't!" only citing anecdotal personal experience.

Yup

I met my wife on OKCupid (back when it was, according to this article, good). I'm 5'6".

I’m 5’4” and met my wife (5’1”) on OKC.

I will say that all the women I dated on OKC were shorter than me, likely because it’s common for women to filter by height.

I dated women who were not shorter than me, but met them IRL.

Me too!

me too :)