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.
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.