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Comment by online-ignorer | Hacker News Reader

Online dating is all about looks first and nothing else! You better look halfway decent or your going to hate Tinder and etc. If your a minority I bet it’s not a lot of fun either!

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I met my wife online. The first time I ever saw her was when I drove 3 hours to meet her. She is black and I’m not. Prior to dating online I would have probably not dated a black girl, but because of the internet I had the best thing that ever happened to me. So...I totally relate to the article.

Likewise, the first time I saw my wife was when she showed up on my doorstep after about 6 weeks of online messages 15+ years ago. Fell in love at first sight!

She's white and I'm not; although so were most of the girls I met online, so I guess that didn't change much on my end. I wanted to meet her because of the words she used and how she expressed herself made her irresistible. That she turned out to be gorgeous in person was just icing on the cake

Online dating is not just Tinder, but also questionary-heavy sites like OkCupid. "Substance, not just selfies" is their current slogan.

The questions are just lagniappe.

Try OkCupid with the "nice boy" pic for a while, then switch to one with visible abs, then let us know if you still believe their slogan.

edit: p.s. if you're online dating and don't have abs, get some.

I wonder how culture specific this is. I once read a fascinating article about the differences in taste between Quebec and French women, where the former preferred muscular men while the latter preferred thinner ones. The theory was that in France, not being muscular is perceived as a sign of belonging to a higher social class whereas having strong arms betrays that you do a physical, low-paid job; whereas in North America, going to the gym seems to be a practice which transcends social class.

EDIT: where as --> whereas

Both muscular and thin have abs so OP still has a point.

Yes, you end up attracting different sorts of people. What does that prove?

I think this is key - what are you optimizing for here?

It seems like people arguing here have different metrics for success in online dating.

I look at it more as bait in a numbers game. Whether they admit it or not, sex sells for everyone. More dates means more opportunities to find someone you jive with.

I think my assumption that people are people is just as good as your assumption that abs bring a different clientele.

I think the woman I met five years ago would be unhappy if I reactivated my account to try a non-"nice boy" pic.

I'm best described as "average" in appearance, which of course isn't the worst place to be, but interestingly I had much better luck than my friend with better abs. Almost as if a lot of people aren't just looking for the most attractive hookup.

The questions are core to their matching algorithm. Yes, you'll get superficially better results by being white, tall and having a chiseled face or being a blond, thin and short woman, but that doesn't change the fact that you'll meet lots of girls/guys that you might or might not match with.

The questionnaires and pairing algorithms used by OkCupid or Match just narrow down the pool of people to something manageable. But at the end of the day you're still filtering people in your pool based on looks more often than not. At least this has been my experience with both several years ago.

That's not true. It's also about height.

unlike in real life where ugly trolls get to date beauties?

(edit: this is just relevant to the first half of the comment)

I’m not even talking about beauties ... the average looking chicks are equally coveted and possibly sought after more then the hot ones.

As an average-looking guy I've had no trouble finding women to date online. The trick is to not have a "trick" and just be a decent human being who wants to have mutually fun conversations with people. Make more friends than lovers, like anyone with their head on straight will expect of the world.

It's almost like respecting people actually counts for something in the real world.

If you're physically unattractive and you meet someone in real life, you still get to introduce yourself and give them a glance of your redeeming qualities. Online, it's "flawed you" against 100s of perfect looking guys. You don't stand a chance.

I'm a minority and had a great time on OkCupid after I posted better pictures and made the words in my profile more interesting. Dated all sorts of people, too.

Actually even without looks, being socially distinct is probably enough to make it less fun.

I once tried to sign up eHarmony only to be rejected even before getting to a paywall. At least they are being honest they won't find any match for weirdos like me before taking my money.

>socially distinct

what do you mean by this?

I meant to say, number of social factors like religions, and other factors (I don't remember what kind of other questions it asked) perhaps made my compatibility to very small subset, perhaps to the point eliminated anyone remotely socially compatible.

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