Hacker News Reader

Comment by aerophilic | Hacker News Reader

As someone recently single for the first time in over 14 years... it was an eye opening experience to see how things had changed.

Online dating is very much a skill, and books I have read point and tell me even more.

My short version of what I have learned (and have succeeded with): 1. Appearance matters, but more so for females 2. For men, it is more important that you convey what you are doing than absolute attractiveness. Women are most attracted to “rocket ships”, people that are going places with their lives (it doesn’t matter your current state).

Also, I recommend Hinge over most of the apps out there... for what it is worth, I have had my most success there, including the girl I am currently dating.

Just my two cents...

View on HN

Always calibrate the dating advice by the attractiveness of the person giving it. It's just a very different game for different types of people.

I'm reminded of a 6 ft tall, blonde roommate I once had who advised me to "make sure your photos have you doing something in them, so the women you match with have a hook to start the conversation with.".

(If you don't see what's hilarious about that advice, you are either not a man, are extremely attractive, or haven't ever used a dating app)

I have male friends who get approached by women in bars, rather than the other way around. I guess their advice would be "go to bars and just wait, someone will notice you." I go to bars and this has never happened to me in my life.

Back in the days when I went to bars, I'd tease a handsome friend of mine that his pickup line was "ok".

For me the ban on smoking in bars was a great leveler, smokers would have to go outside and hang out with people that are all in different groups inside and everyone would chat to each other. Obviously "take up smoking" is bad advice, but is there anything else that forces cross group interaction like this?

Taking up smoking may be bad advice, but keeping your (smoker) buddy company outside sounds like a reasonable way to mingle.

I’m reasonably good looking, but I’m really into weightlifting so I guess that’s why women will approach me first sometimes. There are genetic limits to strength but fitness and being in shape are psychologically attractive to women. A lot of guys would be attractive if they would at least do the minimum requirements for maintaining their health. But I digress.

Guys who complain about women ignoring them are usually themselves ignoring lots of women around them who would be suitable for them but they aren’t good enough for whatever reason. I’ve seen it SOOOOO many times when average looking guys complain about how shallow girls are or how good looking guys have it easy (this second point isn’t exactly completely untrue mind you) yet they still focus on the most classically attractive women they know or at the bar wherever who are out of their league.

If average looking guys were to spend more time on themselves- grooming, having a hobby outside of work/tv/games, fitness, reading a book once in a while- they would be surprised to see how the world around them will change.

Also there are lots of good girls who may not be supermodels looking to date regular guys. At least give them the green light once in a while.

I'd go out with two friends: one was very fit/muscular and charismatic, the other was tall and functionally mute.

The tall guy was constantly approached by women. Never saw it happen with the fit guy. Anecdotal sure, but the results were consistent across many bars and clubs.

All that to agree with the ancestor comment about taking this kind of "if you build yourself they will come" advice with a grain of salt.

Girls love tall guys. This is true. I’m also willing to bet that your tall mute friend is more attractive than you probably realize. Being tall for all I care could be the male version of having big boobs. This doesn’t change anything about what I said.

Please imagine how much worse your friend would have it if he were overweight and boring.

Also, you should build yourself irregardless of women. Reading is good for you. Exercise is good for you. Having a passion is good for you. Coincidentally, these are all signifiers of someone who would be a good dad.

Most guys are clueless how women approach men and often don’t even realize when women are coming onto them. It’s never (or rarely) as crass as “hey let’s fuck”. It’s more like they take initiative to say hi first and ask follow up questions.

Maybe your fit friend is too passive??

You could be right that the tall guy's face was more attractive than the fit guy's, who's too say.

My point is the fit guy didn't meet the threshold for being approached by women while the tall guy did. It relates to what you originally said by suggesting there could be plenty of guys, even a majority, for whom no amount of self-improvement will boost them above that threshold.

Anyway even if thats the case, it's still a good idea to take care of yourself and cultivate your interests regardless of their application to dating. And being approached by women isn't at all necessary for a successful dating life.

Actually, I’m mostly commenting on this notion that good looking people give bad dating advice because they are playing the game on easy mode and their insight would be meaningless to below average looking people.

Here’s an analogy: If you were trying to learn how to play basketball, would you take advice from someone who isn’t very good at the game but shares the same disadvantages as yourself or would you listen to what Allen Iverson has to say?

This is kind of how the argument being presented here sounds to me. Obviously, Iverson won’t get you into the NBA but I would listen to him.

Good looking people may come across as arrogant when they say to be yourself or take care of your self but it’s still true.

I wouldn't say the dating advice is bad, nor arrogant, just that it isn't as generally applicable as one might think. Of course that assumes you, to whom I'm replying, are actually tall.

It'd be like getting football advice from a 190-pound wide receiver when you weigh closer to 300. Some of the advice will still be good, but it does ignore a key difference, and you'd be better off hearing advice from offensive linemen, who'd be in your weight class.

>spend more time on themselves- grooming, having a hobby outside of work/tv/games, fitness, reading a book once in a while

All of this is nice activity, but not if you're faking yourself or faking it to yourself. I've read a whole home library (est. eight shelves each 1m wide), but not interested in reading anymore. Does that count? And no way I'm going have a hobby out of my interests purely for dating purposes. PC games are not about playing mario, it's the world of problems, solutions and efforts¹. If you cannot see that, or never seen that, you're likely "stereotyped basic" to me rather than "more evolved". This advice advises me to being "not me" in a most disturbing way possible. And for what? To see a shallow glimpse of interest and then proceeding to that plain chit chat until it comes to lust, if it ever does. The pretence is big but in the end it is either ONS or a family/dating life without all these cool entry attributes.

The problem with non-supermodels is that they have all the exact downsides and quirks. It's not easier after the date and they do not market-value themselves less, like you expect.

¹ I have a buddy who is a racer, country-level. We sometimes talk about his problems (beyond astro money spent on a single race) and it seems that my trackmania canyon (e-sports) progress has many similar issues like apex, drag, curve trade-offs, entry points and so on. Yes, I'm not experiencing hard pulls on a wheel and 80kg force to brake in timely manner, and I don't account for a tire wearout, but if you try to make it close even to my 2 years old PBs, you'll have a hard time for sure. And when you compare us, he is a sports man and I'm a jerk who plays mario cart. Sigh.

Upd.note: I used "you" at some places, where it should read "they". It is not intended to be personal in any way.

There's nothing wrong with having a nerdy hobby. But if you expect to find a romantic partner, limiting yourself to people who share your enthusiasm on this one thing is playing the dating game on extra hard mode.

It's way easier if you have a few interests that others can relate to, like going to concerts or going to the theater or rock climbing or whatever.

It's not "faking it" when you do something outside your comfort zone, I'd see it more as "expanding your horizon".

I see logic in this, but sequitur is that his hobby must leave him with no dates at all, which is so far from reality. Of course "racing" can be more easily related to, but this interest is shallow as I described. I bet that he speaks to me about these details because barely somebody else can understand it and has the same level of interest in it. Not even because I do e-racing (he's unaware of that), just because tech details are not popular, but money and fame are.

I am 6’7” and have met most relationships in bars. They usually begin with the woman saying something like, “OMG how tall are you!?”

I think you’ll find that this is a sub-optimal strategy for acquiring the benefits of stable partnership.

I think you'll find that if you learn what "300bps" means that your relationship advice might be wasted effort. ;)

Awful advice. Attractiveness doesn’t matter for women, you can sign up as a female without a picture at all and you’ll still get more matches than an average man. And women don’t care what you do for a living unless it’s something flashy like a rapper. I’m a software engineer and I get rejected by women working at Chick Fil A.

100% agree on the fact women get a ton more interest, there are studies and blogs about it, including this experiment: https://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-tria...

However, what is interesting, and what they talk about in the link above, a highly attractive women (good pics), will get 10-20x the interest than just an “okay” looking woman.

To your point on software engineer... no woman really cares too much... (unfortunately). There are dozens of software engineers already expressing interest in her, the question that you need to answer for her is “What makes you special?” Can you make her laugh? Do you and her share common interests, etc. Anyway, not a professional here... all of this is based on my observations and “intense learning” over the last 3 months of being single again.

"Engineers are boring, though" ...

Many swiping on women are bots or males that swipe on everyone. A bit of an illusion. On the other hand, women do have an easier time. For example, even on OkCupid from back in the day women had a higher response rate when sending the first message (compared to men sending the first message).

The thing most beneficial for women online (in addition to being prey rather than predator) is the gender skew. There are usually 2x as many males compared to females, leaving the top 50% of women (the ones seen as viable) gobbled up by the top 25% of males. With a bit of a skew in the swipe ratio, the top 20% of males (ones the top 80% of women are chasing) are enough to take all viable/acceptable women.

hey can you suggest some books?

I can, but depends on your stage of the dating “funnel”. Here is my advice in a nutshell: Imagine dating as a funnel, where you have the following steps: 1. Your profile (landing page) 2. Initial message 3. Banter 4. Initial phone call 5. 1st Date 6. Follow up banter 7. 2nd date 8. Deepening of relationship 9. Go/no-go determination

Where I personally initially struggled was the first two steps. What I learned most was there is an art to taking good profile pics. Doing a great job here makes 95% of the difference. Learn how to take the best profile pic you can. We can’t help our natural attractiveness, but even the best looking guy can look horrible if they don’t focus on this. Best way to help yourself is use an objective “scoring” method. I used this site: https://www.photofeeler.com It is somewhat painful initially (as you get scores below 5), but if you work on taking better pictures of yourself... it gets better, currently my best pic is a 9.4/9.5/8.0... but it took me literally 3-4 weeks of taking TONs of photos... I started at 4.5/4.8/4.5. Once you master your pics, then you need to practice grabbing their attention, and keeping it. I can go farther, but hopefully that helps at least a bit.

Thanks for your detailed reply, there's clearly a lot more to it than I thought

Reply on news.ycombinator.com