From speaking to people who use Tinder (I settled down some years ago, so my experience of online dating was limited to OKCupid and PoF which were big back then), that the traditional route of finding a future spouse is still open, and Tinder is for hook-ups, one night stands, short relationships or maybe finding "friends with benefits" type relationships.

None of them are thinking they're going to find their future spouse on Tinder, that would be a nice bonus. Tinder is an app for getting laid.

When I was single and I went to a bar because I wanted to get laid (and I'm prepared to admit I was shallow enough to want to do this on occasion), my search parameters were very, very different than when I decided I wanted to settle down and find somebody to share my life with.

I don't think I'm unusual in this.

This article takes a slim premise and develops a hypothesis as fact that is too large a burden for it: that because on Tinder people are making flash judgements based on attractiveness, long-term relationships will change in their fundamental structural nature as relates to attractiveness.

This is nonsense. Tinder is an asynchronous singles bar.

It's the same behaviour that has been going on for hundreds - perhaps thousands - of years, but you can raise the bar of what you're looking for in terms of attractiveness if you yourself are attractive because you are not time-bound to last orders at the bar, and you are less likely to drop inhibitions because you are hopefully not constantly drunk whilst using it.

Sure, people might get married after meeting on Tinder, just as they do after a hook-up from meeting drunk in a bar. But falling in love at work or based on a long social relationship is not suddenly going to stop happening because of Tinder.

As someone engaged to someone I met on Tinder, and I met a lot of attractive, relationship-minded women, Tinder is just far and away the most efficient way to meet attractive women. Even if you're looking for a relationship, the idea of placing any weight in elaborately written profile statements (which often tell you far less than 10 seconds in front of a person) and sending messages to random women on OK Cupid seems like a waste of time. Tinder takes all of the most awkward "breaking the ice" parts of looking for a hook-up OR a partner and turns them into a fun little swipe game.

I'll also add that most women I met on Tinder weren't above a hook-up but not-so-subtly had a relationship on the agenda, and that this affects guys behavior. If you sleep with an attractive, compatible woman a few times, it's not unheard of to start to form a friendship, at which point most (not all) guys in our society start to blanche at the idea of her doing the same with other partners. There's also the fact that for many of us, hook-up sex isn't even the best sex. So there's a natural draw to exclusivity.

Men might try to use Tinder for hook-ups, but the higher quality female users sort out male users who project this image. I would 100% rather swipe right on a bald guy with a picture of him dancing with his niece at a wedding than with a muscular 25-year old taking a shirtless selfie in a dirty bathroom mirror.

I think that's what the original article gets wrong. Men who can signal their potential as a good mate on Tinder get matched with higher quality women, even those who are more attractive than them.

I am very relationship-minded, but after having a couple of very long-term relationships that began online, I am seeking some damn serendipity for the next relationship. The thought of women swiping (either direction) in response to some fleeting half-glimpse mostly based on how well I could choose photos that overstate my attractiveness is seriously a distressing idea.

The shift in the way people perceive online dating stresses me out. In general it makes me feel that I would not be considered or evaluated in serendipitous real-life encounters, because everyone has filed away "dating" to be "that thing I screen for on Tinder." People you meet in random circumstances, and who might strike up a conversation about going on a date, are now universally panned, perhaps because there is a risk factor with meeting a stranger that way that feels mitigated on a platform like Tinder. But whatever it is, it means that non-empty, substantive, 3-D interactions out in the real world are heavily discounted compared to what I really feel are hollow, checkout-line-candy-bar low-substance representations of our selves (e.g. Tinder profile, OKCupid profile) ...

I'm very secure with being alone, so I think my only realistic hope is that later on, maybe when I am 35 or maybe when I am 40, some single women in the age range I am seeking will stop viewing it this way, and someone they happen to meet when they are out doing something will again be evaluated as a possible partner. I've more or less resigned myself to being alone and missing out on sexual opportunities between now and then. I don't consent to being evaluated the Tinder way ... and I'm just gonna go ahead and keep on not consenting to that.

I can only speak about the male perspective on this ... but I imagine the same would be true for females, except that it seems likely that a higher proportion of male Tinder users are seeking casual sex. As a result, something like Tinder is well-suited to women who either do want casual sex, or who want to screen against people seeking only that. It doesn't seem to offer reciprocal utility for a male in my situation.

I think I'd feel less stressed if everyone was just using Tinder for casual sex.

It's probably just torschlusspanik anyway O_o ...

What an awesome word! TIL that it's German for 'gate-shut-panic', [1] or 'fear that time is running out' apparently. Literally the feeling that medieval peasants had when the castle gates were closing for an upcoming onslaught by enemies.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Torschlusspanik

Also, consider how scripted and industrialized the quest for "serendipity" actually was - for most people, it amounted to an otherwise boring trawl through bars often devoid of anyone attractive to you.

I go to quiet cafés when I want to think or relax, and mentally I'm not in the headspace of evaluating mates. I guess I'd be open to a woman who made the first move in that situation, but I don't expect it. Even when I go to concerts, it's generally (shock) to listen to music, and I try my best to tune out the existence of the crowd.

The point of serendipity is that it happens when you're not trying to make it happen. By definition, if something is industrialized and scripted, it's not serendipitous. Trawling bars or going to a party with explicit goals to evaluate potential mates is totally the opposite of what I'm talking about, and things like Tinder, while reducing some up front costs (you don't have to physically go anywhere, you don't risk in-person rejection, etc.), are like hyper mega on-steroids version of trawling with explicit mate evaluation goals.

I'm not sure I agree about the macho comment either. In my experience, trying to win the affection of intellectual women, humor is by far the most critical thing.

Here's a DFW quote that has meant a lot to me regarding my modern understanding of the personal importance of serendipity:

"Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer."

Haha, this reminds me of a concert I went to in Manhattan a couple of years ago, for a German metal band from the 80s. It was a pretty small venue, the total crowd was less than 500 (I think the fire marshall's sign said max capacity of 450), and as you might expect for a German metal band, the crowd was overwhelmingly male. So I stood near the back (since I like to do that, I'm not into mosh pits) and saw two women come in together. Unlike the men who were obviously all there to actually see the band, and who were using their phones to take pictures of... the band, these two women took selfies of themselves with the band in the background, then promptly went over to the bar to troll for men. None of the men seemed too interested in them...

Seems reasonable. I'm all about being as committed to my personal life as my work and I make those dating apps WORK for me. I am talking 1-2 dates a week when I'm in search mode.

But I met my current SO after I went climbing with my friend and he invited his housemate along. Within a day I knew I was at least somewhat interested, but there was another man partially in my friend group I was interested in. Within three weeks the other man had done something that killed my interest and the climbing man had consistently impressed me.

So I made a move. Tada, two years later we're living together and happy as clams.

There's something to be said for the pre-filter of friends that I find can't be matched yet with online algorithms.

I find your wording very cute: "the climbing man had consistently impressed me" -- I'm imagining some kind of Tarzan character who happened to be out with you when all sorts of freak occurrences happened that were perfectly suited for climbing: getting a cat out of a tree, getting a ball back for some children, getting back into an apartment when you've locked yourself out.

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly did the other guy to do kill your interest?

Most of the participants were men doing the exact same thing. Most of the remaining participants were married couples. Perhaps young, single women are aware of when they might be walking into an ogling trap?

The main thing I learned (apart from novice swing dancing) was that joining up in social groups for the explicit purpose (or even partial purpose) of evaluating potential mates is inefficient.

There is another aspect of this that I legitimately want to ask questions about: what do you do if all of your interests are male-dominated, and you're seeking a female partner with characteristics anti-correlated to those types of interests?

I'm not just talking about preferring some male-dominated things, and needing to try new things. I'm talking about already having tried lots and lots of things and learning that, after years of reflection, the only things you actually enjoy just so happen to be male-dominated. (Basically, I'm saying the excuse of "try something new" is not applicable in this case).

For me personally, one of my greatest recreational hobbies is to play very complicated, strategic board games. I love playing immersive games that take many hours to play and require fairly intensive level of thought and focus. I grew up playing competitive chess, and I have always just had a really deep seated fondness for this type of game, even from a very young age. I love the idea of having a partner who likes it as much as I do, but after years of going to board game meet-up groups, university game clubs, and playing with my extended network of friends, I have not ever met a female who enjoys these games anywhere close to the level that I do.

In terms of athletics, I mostly like to do long distance running and weight lifting, both because I tune everything out and have "introvert time" -- definitely something I don't want to share with a partner. I also love to play squash which is unfortunately a very male-dominated sport.

I love hiking and camping -- but what is so funny is that you can take an activity like hiking and just add one tiny variation to it to turn it into geocaching, and now suddenly it is a male-dominated "nerd" hobby with a very negative connotation when dating.

Hiking == good, rugged, self-reliant, healthy

Geocaching == dork, lame, anti-social, takes too long

Sigh, it's all about status.

I also enjoy recreational software development, which again is heavily male-dominated. Even the interests I have that skew on the more popular side of things, like Premier League football or certain obscure corners American humor, tend to be male-centric (e.g. how disappointing that the subreddit about Earwolf's Hollywood Handbook is so male-dominated!).

Yet I consider myself extremely willing to try new things. My interest in feminist literature was piqued once after reading a Slate Star Codex post, and I went off the deep end reading every highly regarded piece of feminist literature I could for months. I have gone through long patches of life when I am pseudo-religiously focused on yoga and meditation. Animals are a hugely important part of my life, particularly cats. I mentioned taking a dance class.

I'm not going to win awards for being the world's most well-rounded guy, but I try hard to challenge my perspective and explore new things. And even still, the God's honest truth about who I really am inside is that I just so happen to be most passionate about a bunch of hobbies that happen to be male-dominated.

Probably the singular interest I have that is widely shared with women is that I love cooking and spend a lot of time perfecting recipes and cooking unusual things. But I am vegan and a lot of that has been motivated by my desire to never sacrifice the tastiness or desirability of my food just because I am vegan -- and so even this makes people uncomfortable.

The uncomfortable truth as I have grown older and become more comfortable about understanding who I really am is that I just simply don't share hobby interests with very many women. I would prefer to meet and share relationship experiences with more women, but I have adjusted to accept that dating life for me means long periods of being single punctuated by opportunities to date those extremely rare women who happen to be interested in or at least curious and tolerant of my interests and personality. They have been amazing women ... but it's still not the ideal.

I think I understand your dilemma with male-dominated hobbies. Most of the things I do are male-dominated as well. I met my girlfriend in high school, and for a long time it annoyed me that she showed little interest in my stuff. Until at some point I realised that it's not necessary to like all the same things. It doesn't matter that we are different in many regards; over the years we've still found a lot of things we both like, and deep down we seem to have a similar world view despite being superficially completely different.

So maybe you should stop looking for women that are similar to you, and accept that your future partner will not care about the majority of your interests. At least in my experience that's really okay; as long as you have respect for another.

I wrote my reply based on the claim that I should join some social groups or something to heighten the chances of randomly meeting someone new.

If you assume that is the way to do it, then the dilemma is (a) it's not very efficient because most people doing the activity aren't really a good match and are just trying to do the activity, and (b) all the activities that actually make me happy are male-dominated and even anti-correlated with popular depictions (depictions that are borne out in the data too, e.g. when OKCupid posts their data) of what women want in a man.

If you disregard the suggestion of needing to use social hobbies as a means for finding a date, then I agree with you, and finding people who are different from me has been the primary way in which I have had previous relationships.

it's just too much work, for not enough payoff, and i'm also too picky about my mates. i found that the women i attracted really didn't add much into my life, nor did the actual companionship. i found it to be much like a 2nd job to maintain a relationship and the expectations that go along with it. i already have a job, i don't need a second one. maybe that's my problem, but it is what it is.

i plan on retiring somewhere cheap and warm in my 40s or early 50s and not really bothering with mortgage or family or anything.

personally i think a lot of guys are like this, they just don't talk about it because the social expectation of career/family/mortgage is too strong.

Although relationships are very difficult, I think it's probably beneficial for me to have a wife since she keeps me from entirely isolating myself from all human contact and also creates "excuses" for me to experience things I otherwise wouldn't (like, let's go to this play or that ballgame, where just me I'd never just go myself). Plus we can be there for each as we get older.

I applaud you though for being able to see through social pressure and figure out what you want in life. I think you're right about people not talking about it.

"Because you've never used them before..."

No, this isn't true at all for females (I have no idea about males, I don't look at men's profiles). Women who are 30+ on Tinder are NOT looking for casual sex. source: looking through probably thousands of women's profiles in the 30-45 age range.

I'm really getting sick of these meme about Tinder being for hook-ups. It's only the 18-25 crowd that's like that. Stop generalizing the entire adult population based on what college kids are doing.

If you like having lots of women around, this same concept works outside of apps, in the physical world.

Yes, it is distressing if you aren't interested in doing that. People eventually want the luxury of not being judged this way while having the emotional attachment to someone.

I don't have the experience of being a man on Tinder, but I can tell you from my experience that most men don't market themselves well. My approach is for guys to show what makes them unique, via text and pictures.

As for the arguments above, 1) about how girls say they don't like muscle selfies, and then do like them, or 2) about how girls don't like guys with dogs--honestly, its each to their own. I think its better to display things that are reflective of your personality than to show pictures designed to impress girls. So if you and your dog are inseparable, show that--they girls who like cats will find someone else, and you'll find your dog-lover.

> I don't have the experience of being a man on Tinder

I think this is the fatal flaw. I'd value the advice of a man who looks like me who has managed to be successful on Tinder 100x over any woman's. He has faced the same challenges as I, you have not. It's the same as talking to a white person about racism, or trying to discuss gender privilege with a man. The privileged can speculate on the difficulties of the less privileged, but has never felt them. The gulf in life experience has an enormous effect on quality of advice.

Women in their thirties circulate these articles around their friend groups via email, and they are met with scared-face emojis and nervous laughter. There are more of us, which puts the odds in men's favor. We are not the privileged.

So, being that there are more eligible women than there are men (and not just us 30-somethings, there are more younger women out there too) doesn't it make sense for a man to try to find the best partner for him from all these options? Studies have shown that shared values and personal goals forge the best relationships. So why would men, who have the advantage of choice, go out with just anyone? Why not try to connect with the best match for you? Someone you think is attractive and shares your enthusiasm? Being transparent allows for more authentic connections.

I'm not just talking about relationships. If you're looking for something casual, I think your profile should reflect that. Then you meet someone who isn't looking for a relationship right now. I think this is more ethical than getting your foot in the door with a woman who is looking for a relationship, then leaving her broken-hearted when you move on three months later.

There is lots of information out there about how guys are successful on Tinder. From what I've seen most of it seems to be from the PUA perspective, which relies on chipping away at a woman's self esteem, and games. That brings a different result than the approach I take.

this made me laugh out loud.

for any men reading this -- do NOT listen to a woman, no matter how logical her advice may sound, when it comes to dating advice. just don't.

This is absolutely incorrect. Actual numbers are irrelevant, what's important is experiences. Talk to actual women using online sites and find out their experiences. My ex-wife, just after we decided to break up (but before actually being divorced) got on OKC and was absolutely bombed with messages from men. She had a bunch of dates, no bad experiences at all, but basically got overwhelmed with all the attention and shut it down for a while. (Then she ended up meeting someone through a friend and they're a couple now.) Men just don't have this experience, unless maybe they're over 60 or something. Ask any man if he gets a lot of action on online sites. They don't, unless they're a very rare minority who's very successful for some reason. The frequent complaint on OKC is that they write a bunch of long, thoughtful messages and get no responses.

You're looking at the absolute numbers of women and men, but that assumes that they participate in online dating in equal numbers. I think that's a completely flawed assumption. Men have long been more likely to participate in online dating, and women have long been far more wary of it. Also, I think a lot of women simply avoid dating altogether in their 30s because they have kids.

Finally, you're flat wrong about women in urban areas. It's well known that single women outnumber single men in east coast cities (esp. DC and NYC), whereas the reverse is true in west coast cities (esp. SF/SV and Seattle). Men and women don't work in the same industries in equal proportions, and certain industries are concentrated in certain places (e.g. tech in SV, fashion in NYC).

>Women in their thirties ... There are more of us

This is flat wrong too, if you look at population figures. Men outnumber women from birth to about 30 (children are more likely to be born male). Around 30, the numbers become equal. Women don't really outnumber men until after 40 or so, because men die earlier than women usually.

>If you're looking for something casual, I think your profile should reflect that. Then you meet someone who isn't looking for a relationship right now.

You obviously don't talk to many 30+ women, and you obviously haven't swiped through thousands of women's profiles. There are zero women like that over the age of 30 on Tinder. There's a tiny number of swingers, and that's about it. Everyone else says "no hookups". (I'm not looking for something casual, I'm just pointing out the fallacy here.)

>There is lots of information out there about how guys are successful on Tinder. From what I've seen most of it seems to be from the PUA perspective, which relies on chipping away at a woman's self esteem, and games.

Yeah, and that information is being sold by people who are trying to profit off that advice; it may or may not be correct. But if it is, that really says something about women, doesn't it? Actual research (by OKC's data people I believe) has shown that women are frequently dishonest about what they want and what attracts them (and not just dishonest with men, but dishonest with themselves too). If women really were repulsed by PUA tactics, then they wouldn't work, would they?

Wait, what. What I remember from biology classes it's that it's 50/50.

that's traditionally what it's been for. The "long term relationship" crowd has literally every other dating app out there, but so many of them flooded onto Tinder to "just give it a try" that it changed things.

"but the higher quality female users sort out male users who project this image"

That comes across as kind of... snobby?

"maybe a dog or picture of you doing something you are good at (i.e. surfing, dancing)."

you'd be surprised how many other women complain about guys doing just that in photos.

No, that's what it was for, and still is for, for the 18-25 crowd. When the older crowd started using it, their interest was different.

>The "long term relationship" crowd has literally every other dating app out there, but so many of them flooded onto Tinder to "just give it a try" that it changed things.

No, it was the 25+ and especially 30+ crowd flooding onto it that changed things.

The reason they like it is because Tinder works better for both men and women. Men hate traditional dating sites because they spend all kinds of time looking through profiles, then writing messages, only to get no response. Women get overwhelmed on those sites by all the messages from men they have zero interest in. Tinder solves this problem by forcing both parties to respond affirmatively in order for communication to proceed.

>you'd be surprised how many other women complain about guys doing just that in photos.

I have no idea what you're complaining about here. I mainly look at 30-45 women, and they love pictures of men with dogs, and frequently say they'll swipe right just for a picture of a man with a dog. Sucks for me because I like cats and not dogs, but oh well. And women typically love dancing, so that's not going to repel them either. What they do complain about is shiftless selfies, selfies in the car, selfies in the bathroom, headless torsos, and pictures of the guy with a bunch of women.

That's an assumption you're presenting as if it's a fact.

> No, it was the 25+ and especially 30+ crowd flooding onto it that changed things.

Again, an assumption. I'm not wrong in what I said.

> I have no idea what you're complaining about here.

I'm not complaining about anything. What I'm saying is that for every man or woman you see complaining about things in profile photos, there's another man or woman that loves it. I've seen plenty of female profiles on Tinder complaining about pics of guys with animals.

That's one of the things about online dating, though - people are clearly having different experiences. Neither of us are wrong.

I'll take the criticism on labeling females who are looking for long term relationships as "high quality." I'm not judging anyone's motives. But I will stand by the sentiment that people are sorting for matches that meet their goals, and many women have #relationshipgoals.

The women who complain about guys doing things in their photos don't have to match with those guys. They can match with non-dancers, non-surfers.

This sounds too much like the stereotypical stuff women want and less like actual things a individual would consider worth while.

Also, regarding the shirtless selfie. It's highly effective for men who have muscles: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-4-big-myths-of-profile.... This is in line with the old male chestnut "what women say they want is not what they want," women strongly side toward only vocalizing preferences that reflect well upon them.

Like you, I've had much better luck with OkCupid, which makes it distressing that the online dating population in general seems to be shifting from OkCupid type sites to Tinder type ones.

This isn't you being ugly, this is you misapprehending the math. a couple matches after hundreds of swipes is regular average successful male mating behavior.

Having a six-pack reflects a certain kind of lifestyle and certain values. Being witty in a profile or conversation or showing pictures of you engaging in things that are meaningful to you convey a different set of values. I don't know your experience, but I do believe that showing your personality via any dating app delivers better results.

However, I don't get many responses or matches, but I think that's mostly because of my distance. I only look for women who live over an hour from me, because that's where all the desirable women live, but they don't seem to be interested in dating a man that far away. So I guess I'm stuck being single until I can relocate myself closer.

My issue with dating apps is that they're too efficient. Our attractiveness fluctuates dramatically based on context. If we're doing something we love, doing something interesting, or exhibiting a particular behavior or trait, we can be far more attractive than any five curated photos will show. And vice versa.

Dating apps remove all contextual variety and flatten us out. And in that case, "efficiency" is actually inefficient.

I think this is both true and not true. A suspicion I have (and I'm sure there's got to be research on this) is that a lot of people interested in casual dating/hooking up on Tinder and/or in bars are unconsciously looking for a long term mate. In some ways this is a very effective strategy, since you're cycling through a large number of potential mates to find one who meets some kind of acceptability threshold. I read somewhere (sorry can't find the reference), that extroverted, high frequency daters ended up in happier long term relationships simply because they had more selection, which on the face of it seems to make sense.

You definitely can find someone in your late 20s if you have little relationship experience. But you won't be able to make an informed choice and will miss a lot of red flags.

Some of the similarities are insane, like the laser like focus on demographic membership, first impressions, ageism, all the way down to stereotypical trivialities like wailing "there's no good ones left out there" despite obviously living in a sea full of fish.

I'm not sure if its baked into the cake because of something as simple and obvious as the rather extreme gender ratios in HR and Programming bleeding thru into the business processes, or both rituals come from the same larger culture so naturally human selection processes would be similar, or of there's a third more elaborate, probably more interesting, explanation.

I don't think demographic membership and age are invalid criteria when trying to find someone to marry and raise children with. Different demographics have different cultures, and different cultures have different ideals of what is good and bad, how to raise children &c. Age is rather pertinent if one wishes to have children. Even if one wishes to marry and not have children, culture fit is pretty important (and age determines a heck of a lot about culture!).

> wailing "there's no good ones left out there" despite obviously living in a sea full of fish.

In both dating & hiring, the issue is not so much that there are no good options, but that sieving the wheat from the chaff is incredibly difficult. In both cases, so far as I can tell, it's an unsolved problem (or possibly it's solved but we don't like the solutions: I've not quite made up my mind).

Mainly the result of societal pressure or expectations. Being a 33 year-old man, never married. That's "normal". If I were a woman, people would be asking me when I was going to get married and have kids (very much depends on area, but this is not at all uncommon). As a 33 year-old man, it's also not thought of as strange for me to date women in their early-to-mid 20s. The same is not true for women my age.

Then there's also just how people tend to rate attractiveness, which is something that really matters in a lot of these online dating systems. Men are generally viewed as (physically) attractive at higher ages than women are. A few wrinkles on a guy, some gray. That makes him "distinguished". You don't here people saying that about women as often.

The age range and feature-sets for what makes women attractive (again, this is emphasizing first impression attraction) are much narrower than for men.

My experience was different. I was called a loser by more women than I could count because I wasn't ever married by then or had kids.

Yes, there are people who use Tinder for hookups. People use OKCupid for hookups. Match for hookups. That has not even remotely been the desire of the women I've met on Tinder.

I see this all of the time, but how often do you think the author sees it too and consciously or unconsciously brushes it off as, "they must not actually be together." This article is like intellectual white-nighting, though not directly offering to save any girls - it's implying that the author knows better than the women whom are caving in to the wrong stimuli via "online dating."

This is also a denial of sex statistics. If this new environment is keeping you ugly men from getting laid more today than you could yesterday, then who are all the ugly women banging? Otherwise, the author needs to claim that attractive men are actually getting laid more, while unattractive men are getting laid less or not at all. I don't see any evidence that less attractive men together have worse access to women in general than they had before. If anything, physical attractiveness of masculinity has decreased in some female's selection criteria over a long period of time due to the fact that a man's ability to physically defend himself and his family has become less necessary. Furthermore, studies have shown that the use of birth control causes women to be attracted to different (more feminine) men than they would otherwise - a side effect not often discussed or listed on the contraceptive package inserts.

Personally I have no experiences with it, but in my circle I see tinder being used as a dating app.

I mean if you think about it, it's an online dating platform that provides nothing more than a few pictures and a sentence as a basis for decision making. It's designed to allow for fast selection of people based solely on appearance. This is backed up by the fact that there's no profile text displayed when you're swiping...all you see is a picture of the person. If you want to view their actual profile, you need to click their picture, which hardly anyone does.

This is unlike other dating sites where you have to take a personality test, provide a detailed description of your interestest, etc...

However, like someone else said, many people go there for hookups, but they are actually seeking a longer term relationship whether they like to admit it or not. Some are probably looking for hookups maybe with the possibility of a longer term relationship. Additionally, this is going to come off as sexist, but I feel that there's a large percentage of girls on there who aren't looking for anything at all other than attention. This is particularly true for attractive girls. Hell, who wouldn't love to have people constantly telling them they're beautiful? I've even talked to a few attractive girls who use Tinder "because it's funny". For guys, I will go out on a limb and say that 90% of guys on Tinder are looking for some action.

EDIT: Just to add, keep in mind that age plays a huge role here. I am 25 years old, and many of my friends are in the 20-23 year old range. I have a feeling that the average age of the commenters here is slightly higher, which could explain why so many people don't agree with Tinder being used for hookups. There's a big difference between a 35 year old and a 21 year old when it comes to maturity in dating.

On Tinder getting a match is really just a first minor step.

There is one flaw. Usally it just happens that you find the one. A person doesn't go "Oh I am getting married now let me find that person I want to marry."

My Mom: "Careful who you date since you could end up falling in love with them. AKA Don't date people you wouldn't want to marry"

In the gay community (male at least), tinder is more relationship-oriented than your description (because there are already many other apps for hooking up).

Take for instance you yourself are better off filtering out all the Republican/pro-lifers because of the baggage they'll bring with them.

Usually the signally has evolved to be different. You don't say Republican, you say Libertarian (considering gay rights being one of the topic of difference).

It's funny, I used to look at the types of signaling you reference when I was dating (do we like the same things, have the same outlook, etc). I have found my greatest happiness with my wife, and the only two signals there I used were her work ethic and intellectual capacity. Well. And she's the hottest woman I've ever seen. All three, and I couldn't wait to put a ring on it.

No, she doesn't know my HN username.

As someone who doesn't like to be used as a political boogeyman or have their rights dangled in front of them when it's convenient, I will never understand this.

As it stands, I vote libertarian a lot.

I also believe that one cannot legislate social mores, and that the government does not, can not, and should not grant or even 'uphold' rights. Further, I believe that free markets CAN and HAVE caused (on net) greater social change than any legislated social change, and that on an individual level, free markets are the best channel for allowing minorities/oppressed individuals to champion their cause while simultaneously avoiding and stamping out oppression.

Ergo, I dedicate myself (and my vote) to the goal of an entirely free market. In essence, I swipe right for the Austrian School. (Go ahead and groan).

Agreed. However, I bet we differ on the means by which one should go about achieving/obtaining (I separate those words very deliberately here) a high quality of life for oneself, and the means that will help others. If you're truly interested in a political conversation, and open to learning, my email is in my profile. While the HN community may benefit, we are going on quite the tangent from the main topic. Cheers.

I like the idea of being able to filter people too, and I find I can tell a lot about people from their OKC profile. The problem, however, is that OKC is basically a big waste of time because everyone desirable has moved to Tinder, and the few decent women on OKC don't respond because they get too many messages, and I end up spending way too much time writing messages with zero return. With Tinder, I don't have to waste my precious time 1) reading through a profile to see if this is someone I should spend time writing, and 2) writing a long, thoughtful message, only to get no response. If a woman matches me on Tinder, there's a decent chance she's actually going to respond. It's probably something like 33% chance I'll get a response on Tinder to a match. On OKC, it's probably less than 1%. If that means I have to spend a little more time text-chatting to learn about them because the Tinder profiles are so sparse, that's still a giant time savings for me.

- Evolution.

- Whether or not dinosaurs were a thing.

- If the Moon landing happened.

- The relative size of the Earth and the Sun.

- If Astrology is scientifically accurate.

... among others, all of which I had marked, with the correct answer set as "mandatory". If someone answered enough of these with the wrong answer, you won't even see them (if you do, you'll have a high "enemy" percentage), so you won't waste your time talking to them.

And further to the point, his observation does not change if you find and replace 'tinder' with whatever app you DO use for hooking up.

Not only the idea that Tinder is majority used for hook-ups, but the idea that people have been having casual hook ups for hundreds or thousands of years, and mostly falling in love through work or long term social relationships. You don't have to look very far in time or geography to see societies that don't work anything like that. Arranged marriages, gender segregated schooling, lack of women in the workplace until relatively recently.

And FWIW, within my social circles, Tinder is frequently used to find serious (as opposed to casual) dates. I have just moved in with my girlfriend who I met on Tinder.

It's baseless and directly contradicts the data in the article, with no evidence outside of a personal experience with Tinder.

This is the most aggravating thing, even beyond the content of his comment and the way that it implicitly insults people who are trying to use Tinder for more than hookups: people see an app/phenomenon like Tinder and make a quick simplistic judgement based on what they want to see and their moral biases, and then make sweeping pronouncements like that.

Consider this: at least in the bar you have your chance to make a good impression. In online dating you're one click away from being ignored forever.

Hm. So, how come average and below-average looking people with good personalities have stable and happy long-term relationships after thirty, when gorgeous and sexy party animals and drama queens (of any gender and sexual orientation) keep marrying, divorcing, and end up being mostly single after 40?

HuffPo, so take with a grain of salt, but still a reasonable summary: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual-partner...

There's some observational bias at play. You notice the cases where the guy (usually) has "outkicked his coverage" and you may notice the very attractive singles and wonder about it. You don't notice the plain singles or the perfectly matched couples, but you notice the woman in the red dress from the Matrix.

Second, some people make a conscious decision to have a stable relationship. I'm not saying it's 100% choice, but it's well over half IMO. I sought [and found] a partner who came from a stable family, who was educated and valued education, who wanted kids, and who wanted a stable relationship. Did that contribute to me being one of "those people"? Probably.

Since there are two sides to the transaction, the number of people marrying more attractive people is exactly equal to the number marrying less attractive people.

I didn't cover ugly w difficul personality and beautiful w good personality, hence the disparity.

A physics analogy would be that no matter how strong the theoretical argument, its widely observed that over many human accessible orders of magnitude in mass of the object, gravity makes things fall at the same rate. Leading to the (actually inaccurate) theory that the force of gravity has no correlation with the masses of the objects.

Given that there's observationally no correlation between two variables and not much theory either, then observed variation in one variable is by the above, unsurprisingly not correlated to the other variable.

That's exactly my point, so I'm surprised that you phrase your comment as if you're arguing with me.

The article is not about how hot people find eternal stable relationships, but how they have more chances to get into relationships.

That you noticed them often break an older relationship and get into a new one corroborates the article, doesn't negate it.

And if we take away the stigma of divorce, which is supposed to mean some kind of personal failure, that's good for them.

It could also entail "ugly" people also wanting to divorce/play around more, but as they fear not having the same chances, they play it safe (and miserably).

So, yeah, it might not be that a less attractive person will "know no one ever" (absolute), but it will probably be that they'll have limited chances to get to know other people, and when they do, they'll tend to stick with them.

Source: I'm helping a startup in the Tinder ecosystem. Learned a lot about people's habits.

People are using it for numerous purposes. And there are also other apps. All in all, online dating is also for serious matters.

Well, I'm looking at the chart included in the article that shows all of those means of meeting someone in free-fall, while meeting people online rises exponentially. That data comes from the linked study:

http://asr.sagepub.com/content/77/4/523

So, where is your data that this drastic shift isn't actually happening?

only about 85% of the time?

My experience is that this is a giant load of crap, sorry. Every woman I see on there explicitly says "no hookups", all the ones I've met are not looking for hookups, they're looking for serious dates.

I'm guessing you're under 25 years old. In that age range, Tinder is indeed for hookups. For people in their mid-30s and up, Tinder is absolutely not, except for the very occasional swinger couple I see there.

What better method for meeting people do you propose? Go look at the article: online dating is now the #3 (IIRC) most popular method, just behind bars and through friends. Meeting through friends is falling fast, and all the other methods have gone down the tubes: church, school, through family, etc. In a society where people are more mobile (i.e. they move around the country with job changes, they don't live in the same place they grew up or went to college), are less religious, online dating makes the most sense for anyone who isn't a big drinker.

I can only think of two better ways to meet people online: a referral-approval system for friends-of-friends, and actual interaction in a group setting, but online - like Facebook groups or more old-school chat rooms. Both have their problems, but they also rely on good old human interaction to determine compatibility. Whether a friend thinks you're both a good match, or whether you just like someone's snarky commentary on a forum, you're using your human heuristics to find a match instead of computerized heuristics. It makes more sense to me since you're trying to date a human and not a computer.

Dating requires physical attraction, and a way to meet people you're attracted to. Tinder satisfies that, just as going to a bar does.

>To do more than hook up, one must determine compatibility, and Tinder provides nothing but the most shallow and difficult tools to accomplish this.

Tinder provides better tools for this than walking up to a stranger in a bar. A person in a bar doesn't carry a sign around saying a few things about them, such as that they like dogs or cats, follow a particular religion, aren't interested in casual sex, or whatever they choose to advertise about themselves. You can only find that out by starting a conversation with them and asking them these things. On Tinder, there's at least an opportunity to put these things out there, and then someone looking at your profile is able to screen you out.

>You'd have better luck walking around with a list of your favorite interests and biggest deal-breakers taped to your back.

No, you wouldn't, unless you happen to know a place that's packed full of hundreds and hundreds of singles of the sex and age range that you're looking for, and isn't limited to a self-selected group of people that may not be the group you're interested in (for instance, people who drink a lot).

>I can only think of two better ways to meet people online: a referral-approval system for friends-of-friends

That's pretty lousy because it limits you to people within your social circle. If you don't have a lot of friends, or you've moved, that isn't going to help you. A lot of people simply do not make a significant number of new friends after they're 30+ years old.

What would be better is something more like OKCupid, where you're basically forced to create a pretty extensive bio for yourself, which people can use better to look for a good match. The problem with this is that people have been abandoning OKC and other traditional sites for Tinder (IME), and for good reason: the traditional sites let anyone message anyone, and as a result, women get bombarded with message from men they're not interested in, and men waste all their time writing thoughtful messages to women who never respond. Tinder fixes that by only allowing people to message each other if they both "like" each other. Men still waste time writing messages that never get responses, but now it's more like a response rate of 25-50% rather than a response rate of 0.5%. And women seem to like it a lot more too, because they don't get overwhelmed with messages (this happened to my ex-wife after we split: she had to disable her OKC profile because she was just getting too many responses).

If you're able to meet eligible people through your social circle, great. But that doesn't work for a large and growing segment of the population.

Honestly, you sound like a college student to me. We older people don't have time for the stuff you talk about.

OkC sucks because of many reasons, but the unwanted messages still happens on Tinder, as both women and men are encouraged by Tinder to 'just swipe right' and figure out if you're compatible once you match on physical attraction. OkC provides filters to cut down on unwanted messages, but yes, it is problematic. There are several things they could do to fix this, but they aren't interested, as increased engagement or investment in "Plus" service = more $$$.

I get that, as a human, you do tend to see the world as more similar to yourself, but Tinder's user base is 16-34 year olds. I don't know what other people do, but i'm pretty sure that in order to meet new people it helps to go outside your social circle, so that's what I do. If you think you're too old to meet new people, I have some 54 year old friends I can hook you up with?

No one's forcing you to "just swipe right", and if you're getting too many matches (esp. not-so-great ones), a rational person would become more selective with their right-swipes. Most men don't have this problem; they get very few matches.

>I get that, as a human, you do tend to see the world as more similar to yourself, but Tinder's user base is 16-34 year olds.

I completely disagree. I don't know what the actual proportions are (you'd have to get that data from Tinder), but as an early-40s male, I see absolutely no shortage of women in the 30-50 age range on there. It's not just a service for young people any more.

Based on my own anecdotal use, I find it useless for real connection, only partly due to its lack of tools to determine a good match. I've had long conversations and had plans to meet up more than once, only to be "ghosted" shortly afterward. The only people i've met from Tinder were looking for a hookup. But mine is just one story[3].

[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/426066/tinder-age-distrib... [2] http://www.yourtango.com/2014213884/sex-dating-age-group-usi... [3] http://www.wired.com/2015/05/tinder-users-not-single/ (discusses the specifics of the survey)

I no longer think this is the case. I think on OkCupid, the huge bio and list of likes and dislikes tends to just serve as a way to generate reasons to disqualify someone: "Oh I could never date a vegan/Republican/heavy metal fan/cat owner/gun owner/lesbian bookshop owner." In reality, many very good relationships survive in spite of (because of?) some quirk or quirks between the two parties that seem contradictory.

On Tinder, you get enough of an idea from the photos and short bio whether someone is attractive enough and remotely in your social sphere, and then the conversation and first date let you know if your personalities click.

Answering the OkCupid personality questions was fun, and I had one very long-term relationship that came from OkCupid, but lots of my other successful relationships we probably would have disqualified each other unnecessarily.

And yeah, if you're not a Republican and the other person is, that's a very good reason to disqualify them. You're not likely to get along well when you have such a completely different worldview. But regardless, people disqualify each other on Tinder based on that too; I frequently see "Republicans swipe left" on there.

I've found people I really thought were great matches on OKC, the problem is there's too few of them, mainly because everyone's gone over to Tinder, and the other problem is it's hard to get a woman's attention on there since she's getting swamped by so many messages. If OKC would simply adopt Tinder's mechanism of requiring both parties to "like" each other before being able to exchange messages, I think OKC would be the superior platform for mature people who are picky about who they want to date.

Are you 'shallow' when you eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, sleep when tired?

> In this case, the data is clear that men’s preferences are much more homogenous than women’s. “There are women who 95% of men say yes to, and there’s nothing like that for men,” says McLeod. “A man is really attractive if 40% of women say yes.”

So women have more complicated taste than men. But there are probably certain clusters of women (based on demographics, location, etc.) who'd find a specific look attractive at a rate higher than 40%.

There'd be a "George Clooney cluster" and a "Leonardo DiCaprio cluster". I just need to find the sndean cluster.

(And the opposite: people with wealth and status that only attract cheap gold-digger types, and women in general could not care less for).

Wealth, I believe, is only interesting in this equation to the extend it confers status, or at least coincides with it. Beta-males/low-status guys who win the lottery typically gets taken advantage of, rather than swooned over.

Not always. It can be just the local barman or barista that women swoon for. Or just a guy in the office, with the same rank as 30 others. It can even be an unemployed bum. Heck, women went wild over some felon last year:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/hot-convict-jeremy-mee...

What it gets down to is: there is such a thing as male good looks, it's not all status and wealth. And Clooney and Pitt etc certainly have those too.

In other words, I think there are actually humans who are usefully described as "alpha", but they are rare enough that most people will never actually meet one in their lifetimes.

If that is true, thinking about this dynamic as useful in understanding the people they actually do interact with easily becomes misleading.

There are certainly many people who like to think of themselves as "alpha" but invariably in my experience they have been obviously, and demonstrably, wrong.

Maybe not a full blown "alpha" (that would e.g. be their political leaders, CEOs, etc, so they will affect their lives, even if they don't get to meet one as a colleague/friend), but in most group scenarios there would be some people exerting much more influence than the others, even without a higher rank.

   but in most group scenarios there would be some people exerting much more influence than the others 

What I'm saying is that the alpha/beta modeling of this is lazy and misleading, and better avoided.

A very few politicians and a very few CEOs meet a useful definition of alpha, in my opinion. Your point about rank affecting influence is true, but I think irrelevant to my point.

The "alpha"/"beta" wolf-pack dynamics were debunked a while ago. Packs are typically made up of parents (previously referred to as "alphas") and children (previously referred to as "betas").

Status is definitely important, but the alpha/beta/omega/gamma/delta/greek-anthropomorphism thing is a load of crap.

I recommend The Evolution of Desire or The Red Queen. Both fascinating.

The men that 95% of women would say yes to aren't available on dating apps, because they don't need to be - almost by definition.

Those women 95% of men are saying yes to are obviously not compatible with all of those men. But some men don't care about compatibility, they care about sex.

I also believe parent of parent, and OKTrends, is arguing there isn't a single man out there that "95% of women would say yes to" to begin with.

Self confidence plays a big role too, which goes with funny. Not "jerk self confidence", but "talk to you comfortably self confidence".

Also, I don't rely on online dating. I'm not a "player" by any stretch of the imagination, but life is too short to wonder what a woman would have said, so if I see a woman I like, I talk to her and ask her out if its appropriate. Politely and unintrusively. You risk nothing except rejection and stand to gain a whole lot more. Life gives to people who ask.

I am a funny guy. I have been told multiple times by different people that I am the funniest person they have ever met. I have been told several times by different people in different contexts that I should be a stand-up comedian. All these were spontaneous and not said by anyone who wanted or needed anything from me.

I also used to be morbidly obese. Now I am in good shape.

The idea that funny is attractive in isolation (in the same way that a pretty face is on a woman) is, based on my experience, entirely, hilariously untrue.

Just one man's life :)

When you're just funny, there is a general lowering of respect for such people. People wanna hang out with you, but they don't respect you as much.

What you need to be is to add 'cockiness' to your personality. Again being just cocky is bad because then you just come out as a dick.

The killer combination is to get the right amount of cockiness + humor.

I suspect this to be true. Not in the sense that, from my experience, people see a comedian (pro or not) as somehow "lesser", but that some people only seem to joke. It becomes tiresome. I have a colleague like this. Interaction with him is a series of music references or jokes and poor accent imitations. Carrying on a serious conversation, as has happened sometimes, is great until he starts cutting up again.

One of the problems with being told "you're so ____" is that people often start trying to emphasize ____. You've already got that, now work on the rest of yourself. Autoflanderization should be avoided.

People laugh together to show group bonding. Naturally you are more likely to laugh at the jokes of somebody you want to be close to.

My gym has plenty of men with amazing physiques who are absolutely awful with women. It also has a pudgy guy who's amazing.

What does this mean?

Its kind of TRP dog whistle-ish, which is neither good nor bad.

Can you perform your joke or pickup line or whatever in an appealing manner with confidence and consistently without giggling or overreacting to your audience facial expression or generally looking anxious.

If you abstract out all the sex and the psychological rationalization behind it, its something like the audience would not find you flaky if you were presenting at a professional meeting. The presenter might be wrong or the audience might be completely uninterested, but they would describe it as presented well, by most common standards of presenting well. There's generally a side dish of smooth recovery from minor bumps in the road, which some people would consider a self evident part of the definition of "presenting well".

Originally, way back, the concept comes from the mix of the mental side of disciplined holding your frame of mind and the physical side of maintaining a strong frame when ballroom dancing or lifting.

I've witnessed women ignore a funny guy with a good personality or body for a boring "beta acting" guy with a highly attractive face.

The articles point is that the longer you know someone, the less their attractiveness matters. I suspect that slope starts rather quickly.

it's amazing how good looking your face becomes when you're in shape and have a decent amount of muscle mass with definition.

BULLSHIT. I was very self conscious of my big nose but Asian women love it! The first time I heard 'I like your nose! it's so nice' I couldn't believe it.

I had to turn off notifications for Tinder because it's so active after 11:00PM.

Many male models have huge or badly broken noses (see Stone Island campaigns for the latter). They're still considered handsome. I guy who lived on my street has an extraordinary long face, and he's a now D&G model.

Exercising and having good skin puts you in front of 90% of men. I'd agree algorithm might say smaller noses are, on the whole, more handsome, but you can still be considered handsome having a huge nose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpad_Elo

After being married for the period when most people were finding partners, I divorced and started dating again. I realized that I wasn't very good at small-talk, and I was having trouble meeting women.

The HN comments here are full of suggestions, but they are isolated and not systematic. By now I'm sure that everyone is aware of the "pick-up artist" community on the internet. I'm not a fan of the idea of learning how to impress as many women as one can in order to have sex with someone you really don't care about, but while that almost underground community was still nascent I read about it and decided that it was something interesting enough to investigate. I traveled to southern California and met Mystery, the person described in Neil Strauss's (at the time) new book, The Game.

I hung out with them for two days and was invited to go out one evening with them. There were around a dozen guys in the group and it was a very fascinating evening. No, I didn't pick up a girl in a club and get laid, but talking to the guys was very interesting it did change things for me. Most of the guys I met were like me. They were lonely and wanted a serious girlfriend and had always had trouble approaching and striking up conversations with stangers.

I was always able to talk to people from my field or other academically inclined people, but I learned to be more interesting to others and to understand attraction from both sides. It helped my confidence tremendously and consequently I found more women attracted to me.

That's a long introduction to my recommendations:

- don't get caught up in the manipulative techniques being promulgated by the recent pick-up experts

- learn more about attraction by reading some of the early stuff talked about by, say, Mystery

- approach more strangers and stike up conversations (you don't need to be online to meet people)

- develop a wider circle of friends

- get out and make your life itself more interesting by finding new interests, this make you interesting to others

- take your company public! Success helps.

Generally, I've found online dating to be a slow, frustrating process. It's much better to simple strike up conversations with people that you find attractive. The time to line up dates online and exchange information and then discover that the person is nothing like their old high school photos is disheartening.

While it's subjective, there are stats from MANY dating sites that show having certain traits (e.g. tall black guy or short Asian woman) will give you an advantage in dating over others (short Asian guy or tall black woman).

Oktrends showed tall guys unequivocally have more sexual partners than short men.

There were countless little things that I learned from hanging out with Mystery and his friends just the one night. For example, they all wore the same style boots to the clubs. Mystery was already tall, but not all of his buddies were. However they all wore boots that had a very thick sole and heels that added a couple of inches to their height. He pointed it out to me.

This was one of the things that I had to overcome while dating.

However, attraction is more complex. Multidimensional factors dominate any single attribute. I've been married for over five years now to a beautiful, vivacious, intelligent, talented, successful and kind wife who towers over me in heels.

And yet in your previous post you wrote, 'I've found online dating to be a slow, frustrating process.' Shouldn't that be 'I found online dating to be a slow, frustrating process'?

Or do women rated a 2 not select men rated a 5?

I came up with this theory because a bafflingly large number of people have shared their opinions on this very matter as it relates to my relationships. In each relationship, a large number of my heterosexual female friends thought I was punching above my weight. Almost all my other friends thought I was at least as attractive, or more attractive, than my SO at the time. At the time, I thought one of two things:

1.) Men, including homosexual men, weight traits differently when it comes to attractiveness.

2.) My behavior towards women was unattractive in some way, e.g. sexist, overly macho, etc.

Both of those things might still be true, but I reconsidered the main cause, because as time went on more and more women that were middle-aged or older would tell me that I was more attractive than my girlfriend.

In any case, I'm personally of the opinion that outsiders' personal tastes shouldn't matter in a relationship. I've found each of my girlfriends very attractive, and they've found me attractive in turn. I don't believe there is a single positive reason that could motivate someone to tell someone else they are either more attractive or less attractive than their partner. Best-case scenario, they completely ignore your input. It strikes me as a way of enforcing normative behavior.

But then when I go into the city on the weekend and start swiping, I get a boatload of matches from much more attractive women, the kind I really do want to date.

It's just like they say in real estate: location, location, location. If you're not a good match or cultural fit for the single women in your area (I'm not), and you're a bit too far for a lot of people to want to bother dating you, the "market" is going to look really bad.

As far as maximizing one's own rating, there are a number of subtle signifiers that can be deployed (though it's unethical to outright lie about yourself) and it helps to not be cliche. And of course, the basic matter of having good photos of oneself. Good lighting, well dressed, taken with a longer focal length than a smartphone camera, etc. (I don't fully understand the effect myself, but longer focal length tends to result in a more flattering photo)

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/6e/77/52/6e7752ec3...

Technically the focal length doesn't do anything- what's really happening is a short focal length results in placing the camera very close to the subject (which gives distorted perspectives) while a long focal length results in the camera far from the subject (which minimizes perspective distortion)