Comment by colmvp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colmvp | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal:

The % of people I know who found a LTR that translated into a marriage via online dating is still significantly lower than the people I know who met their eventual mate through friends/meetups/work. I'd guess in my social network, it's 20% from dating apps, 80% from IRL. Granted I'm in the 20s/30s bracket, which may still be on the horizon of the societal shift.

Since Jan 2016, I've tested going to meetups on Meetup.com vs using daily usage of dating apps.

Through Meetup.com meetups, I've found occasional dates but also made friends with incredible people, expanded my social network, and continued with self-improvement. To be engaged in ways that challenge me and to occasionally meet and date accomplished women is something to look forward to every single week.

Comparatively, online dating has been hugely disproportionate when calculating time invested vs. time rewarded. I either write messages that get ignored. Or login into the app to indicate interest in matches that eventually don't result in a date. It feels like really boring and demoralizing work.

I'm not saying people can't be successful with online dating. It's just for me, I don't find it particularly gratifying.

Dating apps favour the top 20% of men, and the top 50% of women. The data says as much. I do think there is a 'cliff' where the amount of responses you get drop at a certain point - whether from height, income level, whatever. In real life it's much more nuanced than that because people sort themselves out gradually and not as much from limited statistics or even just visuals.

The issue for men (and to a lesser extent, women) at the bottom of that cliff is that online dating has the possibility to demoralise the person into not doing actual physical dating. I do think we are entering a period where a significant chunk of the population is going to finish life having never had a real life partner.

Your second paragraph resonates.

Were it not for friends, insightful books, and Meetup.com meetups, I'd be a lot more demoralized over the dating process. IRL social settings at least provide something beneficial, specifically meeting people who can become friends/industry connections and level up ones social skills. Thus even with hundreds of hours doing meetups can result in something beneficial even if it no potential is found, whereas solely doing online dating with little results can foster helplessness.

If you mean societal shift in terms of accepting online dating, that happened a long time ago. But I think in your age range what you're talking about is access. College-educated 20-somethings are largely single and spend a lot of time around single people. As people get older or more rural the market thins out and serendipity needs a little help.

On the other hand, for people who are finding they just don't meet enough single people naturally, I do recommend approaches like Meetup vs direct dating sites, for all the reasons you mentioned plus you immediately get past all the awkward artificial BS that happens on dating sites. And I don't mean the singles groups on Meetup, just do something fun that might interest the opposite sex. We married with children types (at least young children) don't have much time for that sort of thing anyway and the attendance will naturally skew towards singles.

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