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Comment by m0nastic | Hacker News Reader

The rash of online dating startups always strikes me as a misguided use of people's efforts. I can appreciate that people think there's something they can contribute to it, and that they see it as a really positive win for social interaction (and I think people should work on what they want to work on).

But the thing is, dating sucks. Full stop. And online dating is merely trying to slightly reduce the friction for the very tiniest part at the very beginning of it. It seems to miss the whole fundamental reason why online dating is hard, which is that dating is hard, and not easily abstracted.

Online dating is a misnomer, it's basically just online meeting of people.

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> But the thing is, dating sucks.

Wait, what? No, dating in person is awesome. New people, endless possibilities, women laughing at jokes, stories and anecdotes your actual friends already heard 50 times, that slight rush with every approach, the new persona every time you're a little bored with your life... it's like travelling but less expensive and only takes an evening at a time.

Online dating sucks because it turns all that delicate social interaction into comparing of compatibility lists while those lists go out the window two minutes into a conversation in real life. Dating sites completely lack the ability to transmit behaviour, mannerisms, social reflexes, looks (photos barely count), all those characteristics of a person that actually matter, and instead basically allow anyone to publish their dating resume.

You bring up an interesting point, in that I stipulated that dating sucks as a fact, and that it never even occurred to me that it wasn't a universally held belief.

Because I can't think of anyone, besides those Seduction knuckleheads, who enjoys dating. Single people I know hate dating. People in relationships I know see the end goal that justifies all the awfulness that is dating, but are happy to move past it. And people I know who were in relationships but are now single again (divorced predominantly)are horrified by the thought of being back there.

Do you think meeting new people in general sucks too?

I think all the people I've managed to convince to meet me have been pleasant to hang out with. It's not so hard.

There are a few scenarios that might seem bad. If you're trying very hard to make an impression, it can make the situation unnatural and you won't feel comfortable either. Another reason might be feeling disappointed if the other person is not attracted to you.

I'm quite talkative and interested in many subjects though. If the other person plays along normally, it's easy to get laid back interaction. It would have been much harder to go on dates when I was 18. And probably the "opponents" have improved a lot too.

I also respect other people's right to not be interested in me. We all have our own lives.

For me the worst part is the early part when you're supposed to get some response out of the women, to get them to meet you in person. The yield is so low that it often feels like it's not worth the effort.

I think I've gotten myself motivated when thinking of it as meeting a random, likely nice and potentially interesting person. And both of you can decide what happens after that. Most likely not much. But even then it's been a quite pleasant experience compared to sitting at home on a computer.

Of all the people I've met through internet dating, I've ended up dating with one, am friends with many and don't keep contact with a few. But all have been positive experiences.

If I reverse the "filter" idea and think about the women that have had the most influence on me, I'd say it'd be pretty hard to separate them from a general mass of good people. So the filtering has probably a really low probability roof.

In keeping with the reverse problem theme, one could of course try the Bayesian approach. You take people who you know match and examine what makes it so you get a probable model. And then apply that model to unknown people. There are probably some general models (people like this are attracted to people like that) but also person specific models (this person is attracted to people like this).

Anecdotaly, most people I know dislike dating.

I never understand that point of view, because I love dating - pretty much for all the reasons the GP said. New people, new experiences, etc.

Nonono. Meeting new people is great. Dating sucks. Dating is a half-baked social ritual built around assigning way too much importance towards sexual relationships. I'll happily meet with new people for a coffee, at least as long as they didn't seem to be too annoying. Call it a date, and I'm much less willing, for many reasons, starting with plain appearances, and ending in the seriously limiting premise.

And yes, I know you can start with a date but then switch into something less defined. I'd rather skip the date nonsense altogether. It's not to say that the coffee can't end with a nice coffee and toast in the morning, but "date" assigns way too much importance to that, and not enough importance to, say, building a funky website together, or just talking about mind-controlling ant fungus for half an hour.

Maybe it's American dating culture.

Where I live (Scandinavia) we don't do anything fancy. We just go for a coffee or "watch a video" at hers or your place.

I'm not American.

The issues isn't the activity choice, it's the assumption about the goal of the meeting. I find that constraining.

By the way, I just thought what I'd like to see in dating websites: (one, stop making them about dating, let's just make it 'meet people) when you get a message, add a button somewhere that says "the sender is being obnoxious". This (quietly) blocks the sender from messaging you (at least for some time), and adds to the user's obnoxious stat. Let's say that a conversation that involves more than 5 messages in a week adds to "interesting" stat. Once you messaged enough people (say, 10), and your obnoxious/interesting stat exceeds some value, you get told that up front, and won't be able to send more than, say, a message every two days until the stat improves.

That's really interesting!

How would you prevent abuse, though?

Are you worried of people "obnoxiousing" someone of hatred out of spite? Well, there's two things, one is that only people you messaged can mark you as obnoxious, and only once. Two, hopefully after some tuning, becoming a "recognized pain-in-the-behind" would mean that a significant part of the site (or at least the part of it you're likely to message) considers you obnoxious.

Or are you afraid of bots?

I can easily see chicks confusing "ugghh that guy is a loser clicks obnoxious button" with "that guy sent me a string of genuinely obnoxious messages and actually deserves to be punished click".

Btw, we should talk. You have some cool ideas.

First, I see using the word "chicks" as insanely offensive. That's what probably would get you marked as obnoxious, not the looks.

The second thing, getting marked as obnoxious means you're routinely messaging the wrong people. The only change I'd consider to combat this is the site warning you, that the kind of people you're messaging are obviously not that into it, along with any hints it could mine from the data.

Also, I consider your fear misguided. Trust me, the most common reasons for rejection of men by women on dating sites are not looks. The other way around, though...

First, I see using the word "chicks" as insanely offensive.

Well, you need to get out more then, methinks :)

Also, another idea: analytics. This is ripe for psychopathic manipulative people, so should be treated delicately, but for people who are just socially awkward, aspergers, or using non-native language this might be a huge boon.

After you send enough messages, you get some vague idea. Say, "people who answered questions x like this are likely to think you're obnoxious", "people don't even read your message — there's something wrong with your nick or the small version of your photo", "if you use the following words, the probability of answer goes up this much".

BTW, on OKC, I would totally love the ability to get analytics on questions I wrote.

Cool idea!

Maybe the site could use its users as "captcha" solvers, in the form of rating/tagging content.

Ie the site pops up a random picture of another user occasionally, which the user must rate according to several dimensions ("photo quality", "objective attractiveness", "subjective attractiveness", "fashion impressiveness", "charisma", etc).

Or the site could pop up another user's profile and ask the user to rate it on interestingness, spelling & grammar, charmingness, etc.

> Online dating is a misnomer, it's basically just online meeting of people.

Bingo. Now, here's an interesting question. If you're a profit seeking entity that charges monthly rates for introducing people and you want to increase your take, how do you do it?

You need to keep them wanting to meet more people. As in, you do not want them to find somebody they really like or they'll no longer want to meet other people.

In other words, there is a huge profit motive for you to keep the experience mediocre. Not terrible enough for you to leave, but also not great enough for you to leave with someone you like. There is a huge motive for mediocrity.

BTW I met my wife who is sitting next to me, pregnant with our first kid, on an online dating site. It took me two years and about a hundred first dates. That's after using every filtering mechanism provided to me by the site. It was an avalanche of mediocrity. Good enough to keep you going, but bad enough to keep going.

Sheesh, that's a first date every weekend for two years. Sounds like a side job more than anything else!

The idea is to try to schedule a date nearly every night, except the special D&D night or whatever special event. Women flake enough that you'll have nights to yourself, and you'll appreciate it!

Bingo. A good friend of mine told me women are flaky and need to be oversubscribed at least a 10:1 contention ratio. I always dismissed it as player/pick up artist posturing, but I'm beginning to see that he has a point.

You might have a problem finding a woman if your attitude is "women are flaky". This is not to say no, we're never flaky. Some are. Some aren't.

But if you pre-judge the people you date before you even meet them, they tend to notice. And dismiss you in return. It's pretty easy to tell if you're honestly interested or just playing the numbers.

(Unless you want a shallow ditz. Then by all means, pre-judge ;)

Not really. Men who don't have a hard time acknowledge that fact too. When we say flaky, we also mean girls who reschedule for later because something comes up, emergencies, days or hours before the date. It's not just being stood up and taking days to respond to your texts.

It's as real as rush hour traffic and rainy days, and eventually you learn to just deal with the contingency and not take it personally. You don't judge the person specifically, you just know it's possible. You plan dates at places where you'll still have fun by yourself and so on.

Dating does suck, absolutely.

But fundamentally it's a numbers game -- the more people you meet, the more likely that you'll find someone that you're compatible with on enough levels. To that end I think that online dating can be really helpful: it makes it much easier to find many other people that you know are also (presumably and hopefully) single.

So, dating sites don't necessarily make dating suck less, they just make it more likely that, with enough effort, you'll be able to stop dating.

I actually think that works against certain people. You think you have a huge inventory of people to choose from so you are additionally more discriminating. In real life, the selection is generally much more narrow.

I definitely agree that dating is hard, but the web should at least make it easier to connect with people initially. If your future partner lives across the street, doesn't go to bars, has different hours than you (leaves the house at different times), and has a different social circle, how would you possibly ever meet that person?

Often, the only way would be online. My idea with this app was to reduce the stigma by relying more on Facebook, which is more legitimate and more "real," and to find a way to filter out our existing social circles.

Dating is certainly tough, but so are many parts of life. Meeting people and enabling the process doesn't have to be so tough, and that's where the web can fill a void.

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