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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2102 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 3, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Every time I see a smart person come up with an idea of how to make a better dating app, what they're really describing is how to create a dating app that will only appeal to other like-minded smart people. The problem is that, in order to stay in business, dating apps rely on unintelligent slobs forking over money because they think that they'll get more action by paying a third party. (While I have noticed certain odd behavior, I don't have enough to go on to chalk it up to anything other than coincidence.) Do you really think that most people are going to be willing to take a survey about every person they talk to? We already live in a world where the most trivial of commercial interactions requires a customer satisfaction survey, and ratings on these things are like eBay seller ratings in which anything less than 4.8/5 is considered a red flag. So even in the absence of bad faith everyone gives straight 5s to all normal people just to avoid tanking their ranking.

Beyond that, why the hell would anyone want to have text conversations with people for a day who they'll likely never talk to again? And then do homework about it? If I want to have a conversation with a random person I might not see again, I'll go to a bar like a normal person, thank you very much.

and ratings on these things are like eBay seller ratings in which anything less than 4.8/5 is considered a red flag

There's a simple reason for that. Imagine you come to a store and there's 50 brands of candy. And you just learned one particular brand has a 0.1% chance of giving you horrible diarrhea. Would you buy this brand? Of course not - there are 49 other brands, why take even a tiny risk? Even if you realize that one bad review out of 100 is probably complete bullshit - there's no incentive to take the chance.

dating apps rely on unintelligent slobs forking over money because they think that they'll get more action by paying a third party

That's why a dating app should be made by the government with tax dollars. It is in the government's interests to get people in a relationship since couples with kids overall spend more money than singles or couples with no kids. And are just better long term.

That's why a dating app should be made by the government with tax dollars.

That makes sense. Why make an app which appeals only to a tiny circle of nerds, if we can make an app that appeals to literally nobody and actually has no incentive whatsoever to appeal to anybody?

That's why a dating app should be made by the government with tax dollars.

Seize the means of reproduction!

I actually agree in an ideal world, but I can already see the bitter political fights over dating site policy, and get really really sad.

Every time I see a smart person come up with an idea of how to make a better dating app, what they're really describing is how to create a dating app that will only appeal to other like-minded smart people.

Yeah, and? Smart people like dating and are likely to want to date other like-minded smart people. If the normies with no attention span don't use it then that's just another filtering mechanism to weed them out.

If I want to have a conversation with a random person I might not see again, I'll go to a bar like a normal person, thank you very much.

Sounds like effort. I think you're overestimating the length of survey: like 1-3 numbers you rate on a scale from 1 to 10. People like upvoting people on Reddit, it doesn't need to be much more than that. I'm talking like numbers for an algorithm to dump into a mathematical function, not comments that a human is going to read.

like 1-3 numbers you rate on a scale from 1 to 10.

The problem is that most users would rate everyone they like “10” and everyone they dislike “1”, thus making the data very coarse and rather useless. Very few people actually have the inclination to rate basically anything on a meaningful scale.

You can get a lot of info out of even just a “thumbs up, thumbs down, neutral” rating. If you’re combining it with background info on the rater and ratee then you’ve got yourself a pretty good set of data.

What if you don't like "dating"? I want to be (and am) in a relationship. Dating apps should try to build long term relationship, or ideally offer both, short term flings to those that want those, and long term to those that want that. And in a way to isolate each group from each other.

I've also thought about this dating app idea lot, and wanted to write a post about it, but I'll try and post one eventually.

One of the big problems with dating apps is that they succeed when somebody stops using them, which makes them really hard to monetize. Honestly I think the best hope we have is for someone rich like Elon Musk or Bill Gates to donate a ton of money to a non-profit that just focuses on making a good app for relationships with no monetization so that it doesn't have any perverse incentives. Maybe have a donation link and encourage people who end up happily married to donate to show their appreciation, but otherwise just make a good product for the good of society and accept that doing the right thing is going to lose money.

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