Tinder “Feedback Loop” Forces Men and Women into Extreme Strategies
Somewhat unfortunately, fringe communities online have co-opted a lot of discussion around online dating to be pretty hostile and borderline misogynist, so any analytical discussion around Tinder is steeped in bitterness. As a straight man in NYC who online dates a fair amount (1-2 a week) and does relatively well, I can offer some anecdotal perspective.<p>At the end of the day, the biggest reason for this disparity is that most women find most men unattractive. That statement begs repeating - statistically, women find the _majority_ of men to be less attractive than what they believe to be the &quot;average&quot; man. Look no further than the oft-cited and since-deleted OkCupid post which dug into this in great detail. [1] More contemporarily, women-centric communities like &#x2F;r&#x2F;FemaleDatingStrategy will happily just come out and state this as fact. [2] (warning - if you&#x27;re a man who struggles with self-esteem I wouldn&#x27;t recommend clicking that link, you&#x27;re only going to feel worse)<p>The real kicker here has and always been the chart which demonstrates that women rated 80% of men as being less than average attractive. Anyone with other single friends in their 20s and 30s can attest to this; it&#x27;s pretty common to hear a complaint from a woman like &quot;there wasn&#x27;t a single cute guy at that bar&quot; or &quot;none of my coworkers are people I&#x27;d consider dating.&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t really know what the answer is, you can&#x27;t tell people what they should or shouldn&#x27;t like. Telling men to just &quot;be more attractive&quot; doesn&#x27;t really work, and telling women to &quot;lower your standards&quot; is equally silly.<p>As I&#x27;ve read elsewhere on HN, the future I envision is one where a good chunk of straight men are largely just removed from the dating market. We&#x27;re already beginning to see that, with 28% of men in 2018 reporting no sexual activity, with that number only likely to rise. [3]<p>The only advice I can give to men in that position, especially ones who don&#x27;t hit the marks which serve well in OLD (tall, white, and fit) is not to beat yourselves up. Your personality probably isn&#x27;t the problem, you don&#x27;t &quot;hate women&quot;, and you certainly don&#x27;t just need to &quot;shower and touch grass&quot;; you&#x27;re playing a game in which the odds are stacked against you. There are certain immutable traits which our society finds incredibly important in hetero attractiveness, and if you&#x27;re lacking those traits, it&#x27;s absolutely no fault of your own.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;docs&#x2F;psychology&#x2F;okcupid&#x2F;yourlooksandyourinbox.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;docs&#x2F;psychology&#x2F;okcupid&#x2F;yourlooksandyo...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;FemaleDatingStrategy&#x2F;comments&#x2F;iu5nuo&#x2F;why_are_most_men_so_unattractive&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;FemaleDatingStrategy&#x2F;comments&#x2F;iu5nu...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;29&#x2F;share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2019&#x2F;03&#x2F;29&#x2F;share-ame...</a>