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The point of my post was to point out that there's no statistical basis for believing the 80/20 thing. I'm not saying it isn't true, just that we don't know. Either way, even if I assume that it is true, one of the following things must also be true:
Like I said, I've never used Tinder, but I've had no problems on Hinge. And this is with me selecting for attractive, non-obese women with professional jobs that usually involve advanced degrees. I match on about 20–25% of likes, on average, and even then I occasionally get into trouble where I have more matches than I can handle from swiping 4 or 5 days a month. I suspect that I could probably do "better" if I were swiping more and started going after the hairdressers and phlebotomists of the world, but I'm trying to find a girlfriend, not farm matches.
I was around for both eras; when I was in college, online dating had about as much social cachet as taking out personal ads in the paper, and I exclusively dated women I met IRL until relatively recently, but now that it's mainstream, I can confidently say that the women I'm meeting now are in a similar class to those I was meeting before, there's just more of them.
You have to keep in mind that if you set up a dating profile, that's you as far as women on the app are concerned. You know that there's more to you than that, but out there people are dealing with limited information. Too many guys half-ass their profiles and wonder why they aren't getting any attention. You've got one chance to make a good first impression, and so many guys waste it. Either that or they send out likes with messages that don't have any substance to them and don't give the girl much to work with in terms of a response. At worst, they suggest that the guy didn't even bother reading the profile and just clicked on a pretty face. Trust me, if some of my friends can find wives on here anyone can. Nobody wants to hear this because it means ditching the defeatist attitude and requires putting in some actual work, but if you can't put the work in for a fucking dating profile, what does that say about the kind of work you'll put into an actual relationship?
Then again, there's the possibility that you weren't dating much before the whole online thing took off, in which case, you can't expect women who wouldn't date you in real life to suddenly become attracted to your digital persona.
Sure you do. Why don't you export your Hinge data and just show us your actual matches? Somehow I doubt you're doing better on Hinge than signed models-- but that's just kind of a hunch you know? If you're really a 6 or 7 to women, you should have upwards of a few thousand matches after a month or so. That's even if you only swipe a couple days a month, it's just not that hard to rack them up if you're truly good looking. I expect I'll be waiting for a very, very, very long time though. People just loove spinning absurdly fantastical tales to anyone with a modicum of experience in this to try and inflate their credentials.
Hinge example
Data example 1
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You keep making this very interesting assumption that putting work into a dating profile meaningfully changes your results. If you're not good looking it won't. Full stop.
I don't know if you know how Hinge actually works , but you can only send out about five likes a day, so even if I were swiping every day and getting 100% matches I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near a couple thousand. But anyway, I'm not trying to claim I'm exceptionally good looking or exceptionally successful, just that I'm getting enough good matches that I'm getting satisfactory results. Honestly, having more than three active matches is a waste of time, since it's hard to keep up with that many conversations in any meaningful way, let alone schedule dates if you're a reasonably busy person with an actual life. So yeah, I'm sure there's some super users out there with thousands of matches , but it's a pointless comparison. These guys don't "have their pick" because there's no possible way to even make that selection. So fine, I'm probably in the bottom ten percent of users and doing terribly, but if this is what doing terribly is like, then nobody has any reason to complain.
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Advice columnist Carolyn Hax once wrote something to the effect of, "We have five senses for a reason. How smart is it to look for a romantic partner without using any of them?", referring to the fact that photos are often old or complete fakes.
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You see how this is a Red Queen's race, though, do you not?
If every guy puts in incredible effort to up his game, to make his profile as slick and impressive as possible... then NOBODY actually improves their status relative to the others much. Its a lot of effort burnt for no real improvement in the overall situation.
Well, women get a bit of a benefit, but they're still given dozens of options with no pressure to settle so its not like it'll encourage them to actually CHOOSE the guy in front of them.
And on the flip side... the quality of the women they're in competition for is lower than before, so what exactly is the MOTIVATION to put in all this effort, to try to win the race for her affections...
For a woman who already thinks you're unattractive:
https://x.com/whatever/status/1927741663054553242
This is a massive genre of video, I could pull dozens of examples of women openly declaring they don't find average men attractive. Despite not being very hot themselves. The toxicity is not just a small subset of them.
Even obese women won't settle for an obese man, although an obese man is willing to have an obese woman. this is quite the asymetry... and its not solved by men 'getting better.'
This is my point with my earlier post. The Pool of women who are actually appealing to marry is small, compared to the vast number of single guys fighting for their attention.
The only way this resolves favorably is to increase the pool of women who are marriageable.
But nobody will even broach that topic... except Andrew Tate.
Maybe in an ideal world where nobody does stupid shit and then complains about the consequences of their actions,but if we ever get there, then the fact that it may make online dating slightly harder would only be a minor downside.
Isn't this woman doing exactly what you suggest women should be doing, i.e. settling for men she doesn't find attractive?
As for the second two videos, yeah, some women shallow, self-centered, high maintenance bitches. That isn't exactly a groundbreaking revelation. I don't see the point in cherry-picking the worst of Tik-Tok and acting like its representative of half the population. And as for the second one, when exactly does she suggest that she doesn't find average men attractive. She's obviously high maintenance due to her attitude, but the substance of what she's suggesting isn't even controversial. If you want a world where women settle for you out of necessity, you're going to have to pay for a lot more than flowers and dinner.
As @FiveHourMarathon and others pointed out, to which you didn't respond, the vast number of men fighting for their attention is only a problem if you don't apply ridiculous nine-point tests to determine whether any "reasonable" woman would want to date them. It's ridiculous that you're complaining that women won't lower their standards when it comes to looks (which is a dubious assertion to begin with) and with a straight face point to your own set of criteria that excludes 99% of the female population.
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