I admit that this is good analysis and proves the ‘Chad’ theory at least partially wrong.
But the path to showing that dating apps are bad for dating relies more on empathy than the gini coefficients alone. The *process* of getting left swiped and ghosted over and over again is murder to any self confidence or enjoyment, which, yes, is a worse experience than being spoiled for choice.
It’s also clear that the apps aren’t doing a good job at sorting. They’re probably trying to to falsely put hot girls in front of too many guys to get them to pay for the premium version.
Also, hypothesis of mine: I suspect one reason women don’t like apps is because they’re text based, and so don’t convey the body language / spontaneity / tone of voice so important to charisma
You'd think so, but in a Morning Consult poll from 2024 for instance, 44% of men said dating apps helped their self-esteem some or a lot, and 16% said it hurt some or a lot (only 6% said it hurt a lot). 37% of women said it helped some or a lot, and 16% said it hurt some or a lot. And again, more men than women report a positive experience with dating apps. So this perception may largely depend on people's psychological characteristics. Also, it's probably exaggerated somewhat how lucky most guys have to be to get anything out of it. Over half of men who'd used it had gone on at least one date through it, and of those who had had one in the past year, most had gone on dates with more than one person.
If we're comparing it to 'real life', getting little attention is probably not as bad of a sting as being outright rejected, and it's a lot less scary to swipe away than it is to approach a woman in person.
I agree that body language and expression are important, but I'm not sure how much this is a particularly gendered thing; a lot of research seems to indicate that men and women are more similar in their attraction than we tend to think.
If you for some reason need to, you can see that an excess of options is better by revealed preferences: any woman who feels like she has too many matches can always just either gain weight / take worse photos / put in less beauty effort. But I’ve never heard of any hot woman actually deciding and doing that
Hang on a second, people aged 18-35 isn't the actual baseline population. The actual baseline population is people who are "available" for online dating. This causes artificially low percentages on some of these statistics, e.g. "Proportion who had sex in the past year with someone first met through a dating app or website". Obviously everyone who was in a long-term relationship for that entire year is off the table (except cheaters).
Also, 18% straight men vs 12% straight women having sex on a dating app does lend credence to the notion that there's a disproportionate subset of the women on the dating apps that are having sex with multiple men. I'm aware that there's going to be survey error on both of those data points so it's not as clear as it'd otherwise be, but if you take it at surface level, that's a 1.5:1 ratio. If it's not down to an extremely tiny minority of women having sex with a lot of different men, that ratio would have a fairly large impact on the social dynamics.
The problem isn't so much the dating apps themselves, it's the near-total elimination of every other method of meeting people and arranging first dates. (No more church dates due to the decline of religion, dating at universities becoming increasingly fraught with peril, and dating in the workplace being almost completely banned.) As a result, "dating app culture" (for lack of a better term) has become the dominant means for meeting people, and that selects for a particular crowd - and leaves everyone else out in the cold, as there is no longer a broadly socially approved means of trying to initiate a relationship outside of it.
It's fine for our purposes. If dating apps were funneling a disproportionate number of women to the top men, the gender imbalance would still show up there, and if the percentages are low then due to people remaining in long-term relationships, that's a mark against the idea that they are leading to more hook-ups at the expense of relationships.
'First met' could plausibly include people who initially met their relationship partner online, but I guess it'd be down to interpretation.
"Also, 18% straight men vs 12[.7]% straight women having sex on a dating app does lend credence to the notion that there's a disproportionate subset of the women on the dating apps that are having sex with multiple men."
This would imply the opposite of the 'soft-polygyny' narrative though, this would be more like stacy harems. Aside from random error, there might be a bit of social desirability bias involved in the sexual questions in particular, but I doubt it comes into play much with the meeting/dating questions.
"As a result, "dating app culture" (for lack of a better term) has become the dominant means for meeting people, and that selects for a particular crowd - and leaves everyone else out in the cold, as there is no longer a broadly socially approved means of trying to initiate a relationship outside of it."
This is also a bit overstated. Meeting online more broadly (a significant portion who meet online do some through other avenues such as social media) may have become the most popular of any one method, but a good majority still meet offline. This is especially true of people around university age actually since they still have ample social opportunities. I agree it can get tough after that though, especially if you're not a highly extraverted person.
I do have a positive experience as a middle-aged man, but it is definitely not the phone based swipe apps that are looks oriented and for this reason indeed hookup apps. It involves specialised websites, keyboards, and people getting to know each other for something long-time. Everything else is not eliminated, the issue is people think online = Tinder. For example Stir is for single parents.
I do have a positive experience as a middle-aged man, but it is definitely not the phone based swipe apps that are looks oriented and for this reason indeed hookup apps. It involves specialised websites, keyboards, and people getting to know each other for something long-time. Everything else is not eliminated, the issue is people think online = Tinder.
While I do think you write better articles than datepsych, this article I feel could’ve been better
You claim that women have matches no more easily than men when you control for the gender ratio (which is hypothetical), but this doesn’t show the full picture. Gay men are a low minority yet they get matches/likes easily. They swipe right often. As a man, you have to swipe right more in order to get matches, yet even though women get 100x more likes, they swipe right less and still get more matches. This means of a given profile women or gay men can swipe on, there’s a higher chance of a match compared to a given profile straight men swipe on.
Plus, men use apps more, so of course they’re more likely to have dated off it, but of men and women who have used it, most studies showed women were somewhat more likely to have had dating/sex experience from the apps.
Even that hinge data shows a moderate gender gap: the best looking women were overrepresented among the women receiving likes, but this overrepresentation of attractive men and underrepresentation of unattractive men was somewhat stronger. Attractive men were somewhat more overrepresented among the liked men than attractive women were among liked women.
I’m not saying it’s easy for women to get relationships off apps. While relationships formed online fare pretty well, it’s hard to get them. Most relationships begin as friendships not someone you just met (contrary to popular belief). I’m saying that women having so many options and becoming so choosy out of it is their barrier. It can be hard to choose when you have many options. Men just struggle to get opportunities there. It’s still easy for women to get a date or sex on there even if a relationship is hard to get.
Additionally, gay men swipe more and they get more likes and have options. Women tend to find more men attractive and have a higher libido when ovulating, and there’s some anecdotal evidence of women using apps more or swiping more when ovulating. That’s probably why women swipe right less or use apps left, and could explain why bisexual women use apps more because they have a less restricted sociosexuality (statistically). Lesbians use it more because it’s hard to meet other gays (bisexuals usually date the opposite sex), but lesbians don’t use apps as much as gay men. If women ovulated consistently, they’d be like men are on dating apps.
TLDR: Your article could’ve been better. Women do have it easier than men on dating apps, and women swipe right more probably when they ovulate. Gay men have it easier than straight men for this kind of reason. Men tend to have higher libidos unless women ovulate. The blackpill is pretty accurate when it comes to dating apps, even if they’re wrong to say the chads hog the women.
'You claim that women have matches no more easily than men when you control for the gender ratio (which is hypothetical)'
Did I? Feel free to point to where I said that. I believe I stated that the median woman has as many matches as the median man after adjusting for the gender ratio (which is another mark against the Chadopoly narrative), not that the ease of matching is equalized. That's not just hypothetical, either.
'Plus, men use apps more, so of course they’re more likely to have dated off it, but of men and women who have used it, most studies showed women were somewhat more likely to have had dating/sex experience from the apps.'
I don't think this changes anything I said. In fact, for some of the data, I mentioned the percentage of male and female dating app users who'd had an encounter before mentioning the overall percentage.
'Attractive men were somewhat more overrepresented among the liked men than attractive women were among liked women.'
Did I say it was equal? I'm pretty sure I acknowledged that it wasn't. Also, likes received isn't a perfect proxy for attractiveness. When attractiveness is explicitly measured, its effect on online dating popularity is either equal or higher for women.
'Women do have it easier than men on dating apps'
You think this was the point of contention?
'The blackpill is pretty accurate when it comes to dating apps'
These basic observations are hardly exclusive to the black pill. I don't think it gets anything 'more right' than the average normie, but I do think it gets some things less right. For example, black pillers often claim that women are at least as sexually driven as men and use dating apps with the same intentions, differing only in their selectivity ('Chadsexuality'). Even if others also often believe that dating apps are facilitating Chadopolies, they'll often pair this belief with the notion that it's leading to a crisis among women as well. If it were happening, I think this is more plausible than the amazing fun black pillers imagine women are having riding the CC.
median woman had as many matches numberwise? proportion-wise? even gay men, who are a rare minority, still get matches more easily. women swipe right less because they don't attracted to someone as easily just by looking at them unless they're ovulating and their libidos aren't as high. Once they ovulate, their libidos become similar to men's, and they find more men attractive. My theory is that women use dating apps more when ovulating or swipe right more when ovulating.
likes received does signal that you probably are physically attractive. physically attractive people tend to have more matches or likes, and this appears to be more important for men than women on there. I think this is due to women swiping right less (if women ovulated consistently, i'd think it'd be equal).
when i say the blackpill is more accurate about dating apps, i'm talking about how men of color (especially asian men), and black women have it harder statistically on apps, and how physical attractiveness tends to be the main role in how many likes one gets. i will agree that it's wrong to say women just sleep around with many men on there or the chads hog the women, but being physically attractive is the ultimate advantage, and if you're not above average, you have to be tall or white as men or non-black as a woman to make up for it.
Certain kinds of people do struggle more on apps, like ugly people or people of certain races. In real life, it's not as extreme, but apps can be really tough. that's why i think it's more convenient for people to stick to real life unless they're looking for just hook ups.
I thought I explained it in the article. We'd expect the median woman to get 3x more matches when there are 3x as many male users, all else equal.
'likes received does signal that you probably are physically attractive.'
I'm not contesting this. I said it wasn't a 'perfect' proxy.
'when i say the blackpill is more accurate about dating apps...'
These aren't uniquely black pilled takes though. Pretty much everyone would agree that dating apps are mostly looks-based. Black pillers may underestimate the influence of setting and photo quality though.
I didn't say it's 'because' of that. The point is simply that if the average woman was matching with a bunch of chads, we'd presumably expect a higher number of matches among them than average men.
I think good looking people in general have more matches. I just think it’s hard for men to get matches unless they’re attractive and easy for women to get it unless they’re black. Race does play a role, too.
Super fascinating, well-researched, and unique insight - although tbh, the idea of a chadopoly was always so absurd that I don't think I ever took it that seriously. Hot, charismatic men in major cities have been able to sleep with tons of women since time immemorial. The graph from "Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets" is really interesting but I'm having trouble decoding it. I do think that while the majority/average person isn't having all that much sex, as borne out by... every study ever... it probably creates/inflates extreme outliers who have a ton of sex who would have had a ton of sex pre-apps. I imagine this would be expressed the most in gay men though. But this is a guess, not totally based on data, just the knowledge that there are extreme sexual outliers for "body count" even when the median for both men and women are quite modest.
I admit that this is good analysis and proves the ‘Chad’ theory at least partially wrong.
But the path to showing that dating apps are bad for dating relies more on empathy than the gini coefficients alone. The *process* of getting left swiped and ghosted over and over again is murder to any self confidence or enjoyment, which, yes, is a worse experience than being spoiled for choice.
It’s also clear that the apps aren’t doing a good job at sorting. They’re probably trying to to falsely put hot girls in front of too many guys to get them to pay for the premium version.
Also, hypothesis of mine: I suspect one reason women don’t like apps is because they’re text based, and so don’t convey the body language / spontaneity / tone of voice so important to charisma
You'd think so, but in a Morning Consult poll from 2024 for instance, 44% of men said dating apps helped their self-esteem some or a lot, and 16% said it hurt some or a lot (only 6% said it hurt a lot). 37% of women said it helped some or a lot, and 16% said it hurt some or a lot. And again, more men than women report a positive experience with dating apps. So this perception may largely depend on people's psychological characteristics. Also, it's probably exaggerated somewhat how lucky most guys have to be to get anything out of it. Over half of men who'd used it had gone on at least one date through it, and of those who had had one in the past year, most had gone on dates with more than one person.
If we're comparing it to 'real life', getting little attention is probably not as bad of a sting as being outright rejected, and it's a lot less scary to swipe away than it is to approach a woman in person.
I agree that body language and expression are important, but I'm not sure how much this is a particularly gendered thing; a lot of research seems to indicate that men and women are more similar in their attraction than we tend to think.
If you for some reason need to, you can see that an excess of options is better by revealed preferences: any woman who feels like she has too many matches can always just either gain weight / take worse photos / put in less beauty effort. But I’ve never heard of any hot woman actually deciding and doing that
Well they'd still presumably want to attract the best guys they could, and looksminning would be counterproductive to that goal.
Hang on a second, people aged 18-35 isn't the actual baseline population. The actual baseline population is people who are "available" for online dating. This causes artificially low percentages on some of these statistics, e.g. "Proportion who had sex in the past year with someone first met through a dating app or website". Obviously everyone who was in a long-term relationship for that entire year is off the table (except cheaters).
Also, 18% straight men vs 12% straight women having sex on a dating app does lend credence to the notion that there's a disproportionate subset of the women on the dating apps that are having sex with multiple men. I'm aware that there's going to be survey error on both of those data points so it's not as clear as it'd otherwise be, but if you take it at surface level, that's a 1.5:1 ratio. If it's not down to an extremely tiny minority of women having sex with a lot of different men, that ratio would have a fairly large impact on the social dynamics.
The problem isn't so much the dating apps themselves, it's the near-total elimination of every other method of meeting people and arranging first dates. (No more church dates due to the decline of religion, dating at universities becoming increasingly fraught with peril, and dating in the workplace being almost completely banned.) As a result, "dating app culture" (for lack of a better term) has become the dominant means for meeting people, and that selects for a particular crowd - and leaves everyone else out in the cold, as there is no longer a broadly socially approved means of trying to initiate a relationship outside of it.
It's fine for our purposes. If dating apps were funneling a disproportionate number of women to the top men, the gender imbalance would still show up there, and if the percentages are low then due to people remaining in long-term relationships, that's a mark against the idea that they are leading to more hook-ups at the expense of relationships.
'First met' could plausibly include people who initially met their relationship partner online, but I guess it'd be down to interpretation.
"Also, 18% straight men vs 12[.7]% straight women having sex on a dating app does lend credence to the notion that there's a disproportionate subset of the women on the dating apps that are having sex with multiple men."
This would imply the opposite of the 'soft-polygyny' narrative though, this would be more like stacy harems. Aside from random error, there might be a bit of social desirability bias involved in the sexual questions in particular, but I doubt it comes into play much with the meeting/dating questions.
"As a result, "dating app culture" (for lack of a better term) has become the dominant means for meeting people, and that selects for a particular crowd - and leaves everyone else out in the cold, as there is no longer a broadly socially approved means of trying to initiate a relationship outside of it."
This is also a bit overstated. Meeting online more broadly (a significant portion who meet online do some through other avenues such as social media) may have become the most popular of any one method, but a good majority still meet offline. This is especially true of people around university age actually since they still have ample social opportunities. I agree it can get tough after that though, especially if you're not a highly extraverted person.
I do have a positive experience as a middle-aged man, but it is definitely not the phone based swipe apps that are looks oriented and for this reason indeed hookup apps. It involves specialised websites, keyboards, and people getting to know each other for something long-time. Everything else is not eliminated, the issue is people think online = Tinder. For example Stir is for single parents.
I do have a positive experience as a middle-aged man, but it is definitely not the phone based swipe apps that are looks oriented and for this reason indeed hookup apps. It involves specialised websites, keyboards, and people getting to know each other for something long-time. Everything else is not eliminated, the issue is people think online = Tinder.
While I do think you write better articles than datepsych, this article I feel could’ve been better
You claim that women have matches no more easily than men when you control for the gender ratio (which is hypothetical), but this doesn’t show the full picture. Gay men are a low minority yet they get matches/likes easily. They swipe right often. As a man, you have to swipe right more in order to get matches, yet even though women get 100x more likes, they swipe right less and still get more matches. This means of a given profile women or gay men can swipe on, there’s a higher chance of a match compared to a given profile straight men swipe on.
Plus, men use apps more, so of course they’re more likely to have dated off it, but of men and women who have used it, most studies showed women were somewhat more likely to have had dating/sex experience from the apps.
Even that hinge data shows a moderate gender gap: the best looking women were overrepresented among the women receiving likes, but this overrepresentation of attractive men and underrepresentation of unattractive men was somewhat stronger. Attractive men were somewhat more overrepresented among the liked men than attractive women were among liked women.
I’m not saying it’s easy for women to get relationships off apps. While relationships formed online fare pretty well, it’s hard to get them. Most relationships begin as friendships not someone you just met (contrary to popular belief). I’m saying that women having so many options and becoming so choosy out of it is their barrier. It can be hard to choose when you have many options. Men just struggle to get opportunities there. It’s still easy for women to get a date or sex on there even if a relationship is hard to get.
Additionally, gay men swipe more and they get more likes and have options. Women tend to find more men attractive and have a higher libido when ovulating, and there’s some anecdotal evidence of women using apps more or swiping more when ovulating. That’s probably why women swipe right less or use apps left, and could explain why bisexual women use apps more because they have a less restricted sociosexuality (statistically). Lesbians use it more because it’s hard to meet other gays (bisexuals usually date the opposite sex), but lesbians don’t use apps as much as gay men. If women ovulated consistently, they’d be like men are on dating apps.
TLDR: Your article could’ve been better. Women do have it easier than men on dating apps, and women swipe right more probably when they ovulate. Gay men have it easier than straight men for this kind of reason. Men tend to have higher libidos unless women ovulate. The blackpill is pretty accurate when it comes to dating apps, even if they’re wrong to say the chads hog the women.
'You claim that women have matches no more easily than men when you control for the gender ratio (which is hypothetical)'
Did I? Feel free to point to where I said that. I believe I stated that the median woman has as many matches as the median man after adjusting for the gender ratio (which is another mark against the Chadopoly narrative), not that the ease of matching is equalized. That's not just hypothetical, either.
'Plus, men use apps more, so of course they’re more likely to have dated off it, but of men and women who have used it, most studies showed women were somewhat more likely to have had dating/sex experience from the apps.'
I don't think this changes anything I said. In fact, for some of the data, I mentioned the percentage of male and female dating app users who'd had an encounter before mentioning the overall percentage.
'Attractive men were somewhat more overrepresented among the liked men than attractive women were among liked women.'
Did I say it was equal? I'm pretty sure I acknowledged that it wasn't. Also, likes received isn't a perfect proxy for attractiveness. When attractiveness is explicitly measured, its effect on online dating popularity is either equal or higher for women.
'Women do have it easier than men on dating apps'
You think this was the point of contention?
'The blackpill is pretty accurate when it comes to dating apps'
These basic observations are hardly exclusive to the black pill. I don't think it gets anything 'more right' than the average normie, but I do think it gets some things less right. For example, black pillers often claim that women are at least as sexually driven as men and use dating apps with the same intentions, differing only in their selectivity ('Chadsexuality'). Even if others also often believe that dating apps are facilitating Chadopolies, they'll often pair this belief with the notion that it's leading to a crisis among women as well. If it were happening, I think this is more plausible than the amazing fun black pillers imagine women are having riding the CC.
median woman had as many matches numberwise? proportion-wise? even gay men, who are a rare minority, still get matches more easily. women swipe right less because they don't attracted to someone as easily just by looking at them unless they're ovulating and their libidos aren't as high. Once they ovulate, their libidos become similar to men's, and they find more men attractive. My theory is that women use dating apps more when ovulating or swipe right more when ovulating.
likes received does signal that you probably are physically attractive. physically attractive people tend to have more matches or likes, and this appears to be more important for men than women on there. I think this is due to women swiping right less (if women ovulated consistently, i'd think it'd be equal).
when i say the blackpill is more accurate about dating apps, i'm talking about how men of color (especially asian men), and black women have it harder statistically on apps, and how physical attractiveness tends to be the main role in how many likes one gets. i will agree that it's wrong to say women just sleep around with many men on there or the chads hog the women, but being physically attractive is the ultimate advantage, and if you're not above average, you have to be tall or white as men or non-black as a woman to make up for it.
Certain kinds of people do struggle more on apps, like ugly people or people of certain races. In real life, it's not as extreme, but apps can be really tough. that's why i think it's more convenient for people to stick to real life unless they're looking for just hook ups.
I thought I explained it in the article. We'd expect the median woman to get 3x more matches when there are 3x as many male users, all else equal.
'likes received does signal that you probably are physically attractive.'
I'm not contesting this. I said it wasn't a 'perfect' proxy.
'when i say the blackpill is more accurate about dating apps...'
These aren't uniquely black pilled takes though. Pretty much everyone would agree that dating apps are mostly looks-based. Black pillers may underestimate the influence of setting and photo quality though.
I still don’t get how it’s due to most users being men when gay men are a low minority and have many matches. Women swipe right less
But when blackpillers emphasize look and race as the be all and end all it’s not wrong when it comes to apps.
I didn't say it's 'because' of that. The point is simply that if the average woman was matching with a bunch of chads, we'd presumably expect a higher number of matches among them than average men.
I think good looking people in general have more matches. I just think it’s hard for men to get matches unless they’re attractive and easy for women to get it unless they’re black. Race does play a role, too.
No, hypergamy did it
Super fascinating, well-researched, and unique insight - although tbh, the idea of a chadopoly was always so absurd that I don't think I ever took it that seriously. Hot, charismatic men in major cities have been able to sleep with tons of women since time immemorial. The graph from "Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets" is really interesting but I'm having trouble decoding it. I do think that while the majority/average person isn't having all that much sex, as borne out by... every study ever... it probably creates/inflates extreme outliers who have a ton of sex who would have had a ton of sex pre-apps. I imagine this would be expressed the most in gay men though. But this is a guess, not totally based on data, just the knowledge that there are extreme sexual outliers for "body count" even when the median for both men and women are quite modest.