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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

> women will only say yes to 9/10 or better men, but men will message anyone with a pulse which in turn inflates female expectations

Is this a SF thing?

I'm maybe a 7/10 and I've never had trouble getting dates in any city I've lived in or traveled through. I just put some effort into sound interesting, make sure my pics are the best I can find and it's fine.

But I've never tried dating in SF and I've heard the gender balance can make it harder?

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Women get an absolute deluge of interest - when I was dating it wasn't uncommon for me to see women with inboxes with 10k plus messages/likes. There's definitely an aspect of "just pick the hottest 2 or 3 people you're shown and close the app" because you're overwhelmed and over half of the profiles are poorly filled out/sending low effort or vulgar messages. I think most men do poorly because they don't understand the female gaze and they don't take the time to create a profile with half decent photos that communicates who would want to date them and why.

I had a female friend ask me how she could get less lewd messages -- showed me her inbox.

Perfectly normal photos, kind of thing you'd have as a stock photo on your lab group's page.

Had to tell her sorry but it's just how it is and felt really sad for her.

(Sadly, that one is anonymized because it happened more than once.)

I'm ugly and I had a lot of dates. Not a lot went beyond one, but people were perfectly willing to chance a beer if you can actually string together a sentence.

Maybe ranking people like that is why you struggle, and not your looks?

Sadly I think a lot of men have untreated eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

It's SF and also age. I've been on both ends. But even when men have the advantage in serious dating, women on hookup apps get more attention because those aren't 1-1 pairings, if you know what I'm saying.

On Tinder and some other sites, it's unclear whether it's for hookups or dating. This led to some awkward dates for me back when I was single.

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