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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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I think people don't get how Power Law distributions dominate on dating apps.

So they think an "average" guy is doing okay on the apps, even if he is jealous of the more attractive guys who have it easier.

When in reality, the Average guy is barely scraping by, as virtually all serious female attention flows to a handful of Top Tier guys, so the mismatch is SEVERE.

Top tier guys obviously have no incentive to change this. Dating apps don't have much incentive either, since they can sell the lower tier guys various products that they imply will help, and those guys don't have many other options.

And of course these dating apps keep their data secret so we can't even look and judge how well they work for their stated purposes (not well).

So average guys are getting quietly more desperate but can't do anything about it or even talk about it because talking about it marks you as a loser and further lowers your status.

And of course these dating apps keep their data secret so we can't even look and judge how well they work for their stated purposes (not well).

Side tangent but I think you would enjoy this blogpost from someone who works at a dating app (not sure which dating app though).

https://blog.luap.info/what-really-happens-inside-a-dating-app.html

I think this is the best bit:

Can dating apps work?

There are a lot of people saying that dating apps are evil, that Match Group exploits people's feelings. That's true on one hand and wrong on the other.

First the expensive resource on a dating app is girls, not girls because they will pay you, but because if you have girls it will attract guys, what impacts the retention of girls on a dating app? The number of likes they send, so the first goal of a dating app is to make girls like, clearly not something evil. There is no interest in making them pay as none will do it. (Hot girls can be replaced by bots, or by girls that promote their Instagram, they should just not like everyone but they don't need to be real for the system to work, in truth it is not super complex to acquire these girls, so no need to have bots.)

Second the most expensive resource on a dating app is hot guys, because without hot guys you won't get girls, well hot guys are the users that have the best retention, without effort they will have a 50% retention, so in fact you just have to wait some time and the app will fill up with those guys, need a specific strategy? No, do nothing. Is this evil? No.

Then the last most expensive resource on a dating app is guys that are willing to pay, what can you offer to guys that want to pay? More likes received. Well good news more likes received = more retention for these guys. So the things these apps do, is how to make a guy pay the most to access likes? It is very similar to any business, a football club has the same objective, a restaurant has the same objective, a gaming app has the same objective, a gym has the same objective. The ones that are left behind are actually the ones that are not paying. Tinder for example, they are just the best at converting you into a paying user and keeping you, and they will not keep you if you don't get likes.

The problem of dating apps is not the product in itself it is the users of these apps. People that complain about datings app are either:

MALE

  • Not willing to date (so they complain they cant accumulate matches as fast as they would like),

  • Make no effort to be attractive (everyday we would receive emails to the support of guys saying "im not receive likes and im not the less attractive", well yes you are ),

FEMALE

  • Not willing to like anyone (We have plenty of girls that can scroll through 300 profiles and not like anyone and deleting their account saying "I dont like anyone" well

  • Liking users too attractive that would only want to have sex with them

The hard truth is that if you are a guy and you dont go on a date with at least one new girl per week and dont have your picture taken by a professional photograph you are loosing your time on a Tinder-like dating app

And if you are a girl and you dont date at least one guy per week and you dont lower your appearances standards then you are also loosing your time on a Tinder like dating app

So for me dating apps currently work, and actually they are the biggest place people meet these days. But using them is very disappointing