I met guys who talk about their successful conquests on these apps and I get the feeling that a lot of that is just guys exaggerating or lying to impress others
I can say this I got a lot of dates in dating apps and I'm short and not very hot. My strategy was just ask for dates and play the numbers game - accept nos and just keep asking. I wasn't getting a lot of dates before I tried this strategy. I know another guy similarly situated who successfully used the same strategy.
Maybe it's not about the apps themselves but about how they are used and who uses them - eg. Shy guys who are nervous about asking girls on dates for example
> Men are more likely to say they got no matches on a dating site and complain
Does not really align with the fact that men tend to brag about their experience (hence: every single match is mentioned to friends)
> women are more likely to keep quiet of they get few to no matches and exaggerate the number they do get.
But they don't keep quiet, they complain about the quality of the men on display. And the ones who are successful usually don't mention it openly, to avoid negative connotations about promiscuity and such.
> Maybe men are more likely to blame the site or algorithm
In my experience, men tend to compain about the women (namely their behavior to be too picky). As apparent in this discussion as a whole.
> women are more likely to blame themselves
As mentioned, they're likely to blame the choice ("the grapes are sour"), or, if they get any matches, the quality of their dates.
> men must ask and make the first move in most cultures whereas women don't have to.
It's the same on Bumble.
This chokes out competition, and users end up with several apps with some gimmick, but at their core they're designed to keep most users locked into actively dating, either to make the app seem popular, or to squeeze money out of them.
https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyourinb...
The data about matches wasn't from a poll, it's from the data that companies released, had extracted through GDPR requests, or in one case an engineer doing a study: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-state-of-our-uni...
Frankly, there's a lot of misandry in the form of "men don't try enough to improve themselves" in this thread alongside a slue of Handmaids Tale-esque incel misogyny. People need to take a step back and really think about their pet theories.
My theory removes blame from the genders. It's the apps and their form of gamification. These apps, if you are any form of a minority on them, requires that you pay to be seen and less men have less disposable income to throw $200-$300 at dating while also paying for the cost of dating, so they're using the standard experience of the app.
Note none of this theory requires rating men or women or trying to come up with implicit biases or trying to shade someone with the equivalent of "get good". All of that is incredibly toxic. Most of them time when a system fails, it's the system that is to blame. In this case the system is the app.
There's no Tinder-specific data, but it's been very well reported that the rate of matches between men and women on older dating sites was drastic, at least 1:2. So I don't think it's really a "lie" when men say they get no dates. I'm sure with the Tinder age that gap has only widened.
You also need to keep in mind that people complain in different places. You're likely not going to find a woman complaining about lack of matches on Hacker News, for example.
>Maybe ratios of unsuccessful attempts are roughly evenly distributed and the difference can be explained solely by the fact that men must ask and make the first move in most cultures whereas women don't have to.
It's possible, but I hear this is even a problem on sites where the woman is expected to make the first move. There's just some element of pickiness men lack compared to women. Be it due to quantity of choice or the bar to meet or whatnot.
From the women I talked to about this, they were not that picky at first. They become picky as soon as they notice that every swipe they do results in a match, and all those matches pressure to meet up soon. When they've become picky, they match only with guys that have no real intention to meet. Presumably because those are the ones who are flooded with matches as well.
I don't know about solid research. The last time I was looking up research about this was around 15 years ago, when I was actually planning to publish a paper about the finding above.
I had some data about a series of speed-dating events. Men gave double the amount of +'s (if both give a +, then it is a match) as compared to women, and the distributions were what I claim above. Then there was the OkCupid article and some research on dating apps and speed-dating events. I don't remember research mentioning the different distributions although it was obvious from the graphs on the research papers.
I think there is some taboo around this subject, for example the OkCupid article mentioned was pulled off. I don't know why it is taboo. Perhaps it hints too much about differences between sexes?
I want to propose a different hypothesis - men and women lie differently. Men are more likely to say they got no matches on a dating site and complain whereas women are more likely to keep quiet of they get few to no matches and exaggerate the number they do get.
Maybe men are more likely to blame the site or algorithm whereas women are more likely to blame themselves.
Maybe ratios of unsuccessful attempts are roughly evenly distributed and the difference can be explained solely by the fact that men must ask and make the first move in most cultures whereas women don't have to.