You know, there's probably fewer perverse incentives with a government run dating service. Obviously I can imagine ways it could suck, but when I compare them to how commercial dating services are run it's hard to see how they could do a _worse_ job.
I think that's a bit too reductive, but the incentive mismatch is real. Commercial apps generally benefit from people staying on the app; a government service theoretically benefits if people pair off and leave.
It's an interesting question, because on one hand the government goals will remove a lot of the perverse incentives. E.g. having people who aren't going to answer in the pool of profiles shown is mostly a negative. Doing actual, well thought out matches makes sense where for a commercial app favouring one-sided matches that keep one side wanting and not getting frequent answers can be better.
But on the other hand, if it appears "too limited" because the most desirable people disappear off quickly because of a successful match, maybe they'll still struggle to keep the users coming back to it even if they're actually doing a better job at matching people up...
Really depends whether the track record (assuming its good) becomes known enough to people, I'd guess.
That's half of it. The other half is make people think they have a chance of pairing up but try to avoid them actually pairing up because, as Plenty of Fish once wrote in a blog post, it's not just that your users leave you, it's that they leave your service in pairs
Tinder side-stepped this issue when they changed to be a hookup site. The downside, of course, is you end up with a bunch of one-night stands instead of stable families producing babies.
The government also wants stable couples (divorce are costly to society) and non-toxic relationship (because these too are costly), which is also what the users desire.
How do we know that divorces are more "costly" to society than people being stuck together even if they aren't happy together? Would seem like the opposite to me.
Maybe better to put it as "emotionally unhealthy relationships" are costly to society. Singlehood is also less economically 'optimal' than partnerships, and divorce combines some of both.
That's a different question though. It's in society's interest to ensure couples (or at the least couples who have children) are compatible enough long-term to not end up divorcing/separating.
The societal costs otherwise aren't just the obvious direct costs - there are other things like (in divorces where there are children involved) negative effects on labour force mobility.
Both are bad, and I actually put the later in the “toxic relationship ” category above.
There are many situations for which a divorce is better than staying in a bad mariage, but divorce are still obviously costly for society: it drives the housing demand up, the legal process is costly and encumbers courts, single-mom households are more prone to poverty and its negative effects, etc.
The key point is that ideal for individuals (a couple that is happy together) is also the ideal for governments.
I give it about a month before they start gaming the algorithm to pair people who are likely to be on government benefits with people who can support them.
You make $150k, congratulations all your matches are McDonalds crew members.
You make $200k, the same but now they're all mentally ill because the algorithm deems you capable of supporting thyat too.
Honestly, the levels of desperation and despair I'm seeing in the hellscape that is modern dating, I think a lot of people would sign up for this. I probably would if I were single. It's very similar to how matchmakers work, and they're popular all over the world, and have been for millennia. They're an unbiased and impartial judge and coach. We all have enormous biases and weaknesses in so many ways, and we could all do with help to better ourselves.
The important distinction here is no one is forced to marry anyone. This is entirely optional.
They got your birth record, your education records, your bank account details, your employment record. They can write themselves a warrant to dig through your life. The government already knows all this.
>chooses a mate for you.
You're not forced to marry whoever you match with in the app.
Where in the 48 countries in Asia this is like that? Are you reducing the largest, most populated, and most diverse continent on Earth to a single country?
If people are oriented towards traditional relationships, then pairing people up younger probably leads to higher overall fertility rate in the population, so I could see governments with existentially declining fertility rates (read: almost all of them) taking an interest in actually providing a successful service here (unlike the commercial dating apps).
Of course, a lack of a match is not the only thing that prevents people from having kids, but I'm curious what the impact of an optimal matching service would be on fertility rates.
edit: I think governments might do well to provide funding for dating apps (whether privately or publicly owned) based on how many matches from the app actually lead to children. Completely flip the classical incentives on their head. Should be easy enough to ask if newborns were a product of a participating app as part of the birth certification process.
The modern trend of most families with 0-2 kids isn’t sustainable. We don’t need to go back to 5+ being the norm but a self stable society needs to be able to offset non parents thus requiring 3+ children families to be quite common.
That still works up to like age 7. It really is needed for that age up to ~18, which means you can get with providing that service for ~15 years (multiple children) and then going back to smaller apartments.
Or you can keep the smaller apartments and make boarding schools more common. Small kids all live in the same room while the ones old enough to need their own space move out completely to a boarding school. Depending on the specifics, may be a much better solution overall.
I actually attended high school in that way in Poland, despite it being very rare here. I was 15 when I started. While I think it was great for me, I would not recommend doing it for younger people - you need some basic emotional maturity and safety.
Even then, it would not solve any problems here, really.
It is not about preference, but because of regulation. Nowadays the government demand is that each child needs to have a separate studying and sleeping area. If a sliding wall in a room counts as a separate area is up to the officials' discretion.
On one hand, all of this is understandable, but on the other hand these policies do indeed raise the cost of having children.
This is very much a worst case. It assumes three children, each with their own bedroom, and two work from home parents each with their own office.
Why do you need an entire room each for an office? I work in a corner of a bedroom, and have previously had a desk in a living room. I know lots of people who do the same. I know few families where both parents work from home. Where more than one person works from home they can share an office.
If people work from home to a large extent, less office space is required, so the cost of land should go down. It does not because most people are not working from home.
Yes, but, as said, there are probably also a lot of people that decide either against children at all or against having +1 of them due to these constraints.
No one said that one cannot make do. One can always make do.
People can still live a 1970’s lifestyle with one working parent in most of the US. They can’t afford the lifestyle inflation driven by two working parents.
The median size of a new single-family home in the U.S. in 1970 was 1,500 square feet. No cellphones, no internet, no expensive organic food, etc etc.
That was never traditional anywhere. It was possible in the 1950s in a few places. Anyone thinking it was traditional is seriously undervaluing women's work.
I thought it was clear from context that I was referring to people who want to have kids with a romantic partner (I suppose for fertility rate purposes it doesn't even necessarily need to be with just one romantic partner, or within a monogamous relationship).
Lots of people don't want kids these days relative to 50 years ago, but even among those who do, they're delaying the process, often to the point where it becomes less ideal due to age. Many people who wanted kids when they were younger end up not having them as a result (and many who want them haven't had them yet).
Having a partner (or partners) to do it with is a significant factor for many, among other factors like concerns about affording food and housing for oneself, let alone for additional dependants.
I think it's unlikely for your worst case scenario to be realized. Underspecified objectives can cause unexpected results, but it can also lead to desired results. Fortunately experimentation is relatively cheap and tuning optimization metrics is the norm for most apps.
It is important to remember governments aren’t living things with their own agency. The people at the top running the governments are usually all dead in 30 years tops. They have no long term incentives. Put them in charge of a dating app and they will run it to enrich themselves just like all the other ones.
At least in the US, the declining fertility rate seems to be entirely caused by a combination of fewer people getting married and fewer people having children out of wedlock. Between 2007 and 2023, the percentage of reproductive-age women who were married fell from 42% to 37% and the births/1,000 unmarried women fell from 41.0 to 30.3, but the births/1,000 married women actually went up a bit from 102.3 to 107.4. See https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/63/2/695/4092...
I contemplated whether to try to build a dating site a few times while I was single, and every time what stopped me was the perverse incentives. Making a financially viable dating service without actively making things worse on purpose is really hard.
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
If I wouldn't have to deal with the legal liabilities around moderation and user data, I would love to make a non-profit dating site that was truly optimized towards some benevolent goals.
It’s just the latest new tech right wing obsession (see Elon Musk ranting about it on twitter, meanwhile no Tesla has middle seat LATCH). In a couple of years they’ll move on to something else.
I do think society would be better off in many ways if more people had kids but the current dialogue about it is offputting.
This reminds me of a black comedy movie called The Lobster, People are essentially forced into confinement into a hotel until they find a romantic partner, otherwise they will be transformed into an animal of their choice.
If you couple up with someone you are evaluated in a compatibility period to which if you argue you get given a child, if you argue again, you get given a second child haha.
Stats consistently show that women only select about 5% of options displayed from online dating apps. Men select about 50%. And women disproportionately give their attention to the most conventionally attractive men. (To say: That 5% is not evenly distributed amoung men.) The bottom half of men (from attractiveness ratings) basically get zero matches... ever. Online dating is brutal.
I do not think that it is online dating that is brutal, but these dating sites.
I have been through a couple of online dating and personality usually came first, so by the time appearance was revealed, we already could not care much. She was not my type, I was not her type, but that affected nothing.
The reason it did not work out is financial and logistics (different country, I have MS, I am heavily dependent on healthcare, and so forth), not because of any moral failing or what have you.
I find each site and app has its own culture and microcosm. I met my wife on Bumble and at the time Bumble felt a touch more serious than Tinder. (this will differ by geography)
It seems most the people I know who are still single mention Hinge.
I feel like any dating site that doesn't put an onus on leading with appearance will be self selecting for people who value connection and personality over appearance. It wouldn't surprise me if the frequency of higher quality matches was higher in niches like that
You should try AFK dating sometime, it's even worse! Out of all the women I've met, only 0.00000001218% been interested enough to date and marry me, and I didn't even touch any of the apps! Brutal.
> You should try AFK dating sometime, it's even worse! Out of all the women I've met, only 0.00000001218% been interested enough to date and marry me, and I didn't even touch any of the apps! Brutal.
I'd probably pick only the top 5% too if I was inundated by matches, so I'm not surprised.
And so while we can't fix that, guys can certainly improve their chances of being in that 5%. The thing is, what a picture shows on an online dating profile really is a lot down to you, irrespective of your actual appearance.
But men have a horrible ability to select pictures that are either incredibly low effort and poor quality, or the type of pictures that men would find other men cool in, rather than what will attract women, before even considering how you compete on actual appearance. When I spent some time figuring out my profiles back in the day, my match rate went up by a large factor.
>You can punch far above your metaphorical weight very easily because most guys hardly tries.
Like? I haven't tried online dating in a long time, but all guys I knew had normal profiles and rarely got any matches let alone dates.
>most guys hardly tries
That's irrelevant. Women on dating apps are still only going to interact with the top guys that are above their league, let's say a 9/10. Whether there's more who don't even try, doesn't help you at all. Like if you now try and you go from a 4/10 to a 6/10, you're still below the 9/10 throeshold the top guys have set the bar at. Women don';t choose on statistical distribution, thinking that there's only a handful of guys at the top so they'll have to lower the bar to find a mate, meaning you'll have a chance by going to a 6/10.
> Like? I haven't tried online dating in a long time, but all guys I knew had normal profiles and rarely got any matches let alone dates.
"Normal profiles" for men typically means hardly trying. It means poorly lit pictures. It means bad angles. Often it means things that instantly puts most of the women off, like shirtless pics [1], and poorly written profiles.
I've never had any problems getting matches and dates, but I did have to work for it. That meant ensuring I had good quality pictures, and ensuring my profile matched what women on the given site that I might want to date said the were looking for.
I went from rarely if every getting matches and dates to getting a steady stream of them not by magically getting better looking, but by improving my profile.
Just fixing the writing multiplied the number of dates I got by a decent factor.
> That's irrelevant. Women on dating apps are still only going to interact with the top guys that are above their league, let's say a 9/10. Whether there's more who don't even try, doesn't help you at all.
The point is that those "9/10"'s also mostly don't try (I'd argue most 9/10's aren't on the dating sites, so really you're competing against "dating site 9/10's" who are mostly going to be relatively regular guys who know how to pick a good photo)
[1] Shirtless pics works if you're built - it worked for me after I'd spent 10 years in the gym powerlifting, it did nothing before that - and are posting on a hookup focused site like Tinder, and have a profile written to focus on giving off that vibe. It does not work well on a more "serious" dating site even if you're seriously muscular. But still if you look at the guys profiles, you'll still see a steady stream of them. Most men going on dating sites really ought to take a look at the competition, and then do pretty much the opposite of what most guys are doing.
>"Normal profiles" for men typically means hardly trying. It means poorly lit pictures. It means bad angles. Often it means things that instantly puts most of the women off, like shirtless pics [1], and poorly written profiles.
No, they had good pics. What then? When can we just admit short stature, ugly face, is just not attractive to women on dating apps, and lighting conditions, angles and all that and everything is just cope.
My experience from looking at how men presents themselves to gauge "the competition" back when I was single was that most guys have absolute garbage photos on dating profiles.
> When can we just admit short stature, ugly face, small, jawline, etc. are just not attractive to women on dating apps, and lighting conditions, angles and all that and everything is just cope.
You're never going to make the bottom 5% look like the top 5%, but you can certainly move yourself very significantly up. To take your examples, if you're short don't post pictures of yourself next to things that highlight how short you are. If your face is ugly, don't highlight it, and so on.
What is cope is to dismiss that your failure to get responses can't at least to a very significant degree be mitigated by presenting yourself better.
It's how guys decide to keep posting the utter shit pictures most men put on their dating profiles.
Seriously: Ask women to help you pick photos or for advice on how to do better. Worst case, hire a female photographer.
BTW this whole "men have to improve themselves to be the top 5% of men" thing is literally eugenics. Thanks "AWFUL" (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal) women!
Wow, must be a US bubble. I've never heard of this in Germany, and I'd say iPhone vs Android seems to be more of a gender thing over here (although plenty of counterexamples as well).
I went on a date with a woman in Romania. During the date she commented that my phone wasn't an iPhone but that I had a fancy Sony mirrorless camera (as I was a tourist) so that made up for it.
Not sure about all women, but iphone exclusivity was a thing at least with teenagers for a long time. SMS/MMS messages from an android phone into a iMessage group text broke a lot of the rich features so it was pretty common for teens to ban Android users from text messages. It also became a indicator of wealth and social status for them.
Was pretty prevalent 2018 onward. If they were 16 in 2018 to 2019 then they'd be 24 today so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if that teenage bias carried forward for many young adults.
>there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men
Historically it's been solved using religion and families enforcing monogamy in society, like in the past 2000 years of human history, to ensure most men and women get to find a pair to make a family, along with explaining them the math that if they wish to find happiness and not die alone surrounded by cats, then they can't all share the same top 5% of men, and so will need to settle for a realistic average man instead of gigachad.
> When everyone invests equally in getting to the top 5%, because of how competitive it is
Yes, but everyone isn't doing that. You'd think men would, but I suggest you ask around some women on their experience of the quality of mens dating dating profiles.
The fault is in the assumption that "That 5% is static". There's zero proof behind that assertion.
If every man groomed himself and presented just "good" portraits and captures in his dating profile pics, that 5% would probably improve.
I'm a hetero man, but I've formed a fake female profile just to investigate. Wow... my competition is 95% disappointing. My non-existent labia recoiled in dismay. "May or may not be an axe murderer." "Thinks sports fanwear is dressing to impress." "I just killed this animal! Date me!" "Dude, do you realize you are grimacing?"
> I guess we can explain them the math that if they wish to find happiness and not die alone surrounded by cats
Let me tell you, women are waiting with bated breath to hear you explain this to them.
Last I checked, most western societies don’t allow polygamy and most people still prefer monogamy. You don’t have to explain anything to anyone, women get it. They are just happier living by themselves than surrounded by dudes who make condescending remarks about them dying surrounded by cats. I guess maybe we can explain that to men.
I'm sure calling all men on the planet as billions of abusers and molesters makes you agreeable in your own bubble. Have you tried touching grass or better yet, therapy?
I don't have trauma. I have two eyes, a pair of ears and a brain.
I was raised as a classical cis male. I have spent most of my time in male-exclusive or male-majority circles.
I have yet to find a male with even a sliver of moral or ethical behavior. Behind closed doors, in a male-only environment, you discover the truth about males. There is not a single salvageable male.
"Aren't you a male, too?" Do you think I haven't tried to kill myself? It's surprisingly difficult. I'm trying to get as far away from masculinity as possible.
>Let me tell you, women are waiting with bated breath to hear you explain this to them.
Are you saying women can't understand the basic arithmetic of pairing, on their own? That they can't all realistically settle down with the top % of men?
> They are just happier living by themselves
Says who? Polls and studies show a massive drop in womens' happiness since the 70s along with a massive increase in use of antidepressants and SSRIs, especially amongst childless women over the age of 40 in the present. Google it, ChatGPT it, Gemini it,etc. Is that womens' happiness looks like to you?
> Are you saying women can't understand the basic arithmetic of demographics relationship pairing, on their own? That they don't understand they can't all realistically settle down with the top % of men, if they don't want to end up alone?
Do you really think I am saying that? Are you unfamiliar with sarcasm, or do you need it labeled with /s to understand that someone is being sarcastic? Genuine question because I thought my meaning was pretty clear.
Similarly with the other point you quoted. Yes, women are happier living by themselves than with men who feel only contempt for women. The worst thing in life is not to end up alone, it’s not ending up selected out of the gene pool, the worst thing in life is to end up chained to a bad partner.
By the way I did chatGPT your claims and, unsurprisingly, they range in accuracy and substantiation. The claim about childless women over 40 being particularly unhappy is especially badly substantiated (particularly since it mixes those who are willingly childless with those who wanted children but couldn’t have them). In fact, older men who are childless seem to be unhappier than older women who are childless.
It’s interesting to see the narrative in men’s spaces about how dumb women are and how they’re going to end up dying alone surrounded by cats and how the men pushing this narrative don’t realize how supremely unattractive this makes them to women.
I don’t know if you’re capable of actually hearing this, but I will repeat it for you again. Talking about women like they’re idiots and expressing this kind of contempt towards them makes you supremely unattractive to women. And yes, they absolutely can tell that this is what you think, no matter how well you think you hide it in person. I hope that, if not today, then maybe a year from now or five years from now, you will sit with yourself and really consider that idea.
> That 5% is static - individual guys can improve their chances of being in the 5%, but that pushes out others already in the 5%.
Why makes you think that? It seems much more likely to me that women are selecting whatever profiles that interest them, which would be >5% if potential matches made better profiles. I've seen the women experience of dating apps from women friends, and indeed men profile quality is abysmal (my bisexual and lesbian friends seem to swipe on a much higher proportion of women profiles FWIW), to the point that 5% even seems pretty high once you also take into account personal preferences.
I mean there is lot of research behind this. I read a book also by a guy who was founder of eHarmony or some similar portal, and this 5% statistic match real data from their site. Individual success stories are not replacement for hard statistical facts.
That isn't a rebuttal to the point made. You haven't differentiated between a fixed 5% on the part of women versus a fixed 5% on the part of how men present themselves. Both mechanisms can explain the observed outcome.
Yes, it's more difficult - I'm old enough that there was a period I had regular dates by sending corny chatup lines on IRC and it worked so I know well how easy it used to be.
But my point was that most men are doing such a shit job at presenting themselves on their profiles that it isn't that difficult to massively improve your odds by making a profile that is better than average.
Spending more than 5 minutes ensuring you have a profile picture that is decently lit, taken from an angle that present you well, and that you look like you're capable of taking care of yourself is a good start, but judging from conversations with a lot of women while I was dating, that is a high bar to clear for most guys on dating sites.
Exactly. And then they complain about not getting matches.
It is still effort if you make a decent profile on places like Tinder, because Tinder is very much intentionally trying to frustrate you to make you pay, but even just having a female friend you could ask to help pick a photo that won't actively repel every woman that ever sees your profile ups your chances so much...
This is why women are very upset about the existence of bisexual men (and why casual biphobia is tolerated among straights and the rest of the LGT community). Women hate knowing how easy it is for a bisexual man to leave/cheat. They hate having far less "control".
Men need an equivalent to political lesbianism.
Gay men have excellent marriage/partnersahip statistics. They stay together, they don't (or tolerate/accept) "cheating", very low physical abuse, very happy/satisfying relationships etc statistics.
Lesbian women have literally the opposite. The memes about domestic violence and other serious problems among lesbian communities would be funny if they weren't so true.
When I see these sad "women are from Venus, men from Mars" style of comments, all I can feel is that this is a sad truth of the universe.
The men who enjoy showing off pictures of their fishing/hunting haul. The men who use android phones, the men who want to show themselves topless (even in contexts where this makes sense). These man are not "low quality" or even "less desirable" partners in any objective sense because their photography choices are not amicable to women's desires. Women account for like 80% of consumer spending and advertising/marketing folks know some extremely uncomfortable truths about group-think/hive-mind mentality among women. These men should celebrate that they are showing their authentic selves, not the contorted version they have to repeatedly summon to satisfy foids.
Basically, men should actively be proud of our achievements, and any who can ignore societies intense biphobia should lean into the masculine side of their desires, as their relationship satisfaction will likely go significantly up.
> Gay men have excellent marriage/partnersahip statistics. They stay together, they don't (or tolerate/accept) "cheating", very low physical abuse, very happy/satisfying relationships etc statistics.
What.
Have you ever met a gay male? Maybe even talked to him?
Gay males are still males at the end of the day so they always land themselves in the most damaging relationships possible. Males already cause tons of harm by themselves, so sum them together and you get a truly dreary mess.
There's a reason there are so many gay males who are so homophobic they make Evangelicals seem like a Pride Parade Organizing Committee.
I was like that. I simply managed to realize that the problem wasn't homosexuality, but rather that it's always been males.
Dating males in general is a form of self-harm if I'm being honest with you. I'm bisexual and I do still feel attracted to males but I am at a good enough spot that I don't want to hurt myself that way.
> These man are not "low quality" or even "less desirable" partners in any objective sense because their photography choices are not amicable to women's desires.
They are not objectively "low quality", but they are objectively less desirable to women if women find them less desirable for it.
You can enjoy leaning into those things all you want, but you are not owed anything from women. They have no obligation to look past how you present yourself. And so if how you present yourself reduces their interest in you, that is on you. If you're fine with that, then by all means go ahead.
For my part, it was a very small sacrifice to spend a couple of hours figuring out which parts of my personality women actually finds attractive, and how to signal that with my pictures and profile text.
It’s only brutal because heteronormativity and beauty standards have made certain promises to boys, that they’ve grown expecting to be kept as men - and our society is entirely unable / unwilling to deliver on that promise. “It’s okay, everything will work out,” we hear as boys, and then as men, have our faces rubbed in, “of course it’s not okay, it was never okay, you have to work it out yourself, nobody owes you anything!”
It’s whiplash for a lot of guys, and that’s if you’re even savvy enough to clock it.
I don’t think it needs to be any more of a brutal realization than say the existence of say Santa, and yet here we are.
The original OKCupid was the best dating site and the only one that I enjoyed using. It has since been gobbled up by the Match.com behemoth and is now basically useless.
Amen to that. OKC back in the day was wonderful, for nerds like myself who loved answering questions and data in general.
The great thing was that it was self-selecting -- the less compatible types answered very few questions and stumbled over anything involving basic general knowledge, logic or ethics. The compatible ones added thoughtful or witty freeform comments to their answers. You could essentially clear all the usual first-few-dates compatibility dances just by running through people's answers.
I met many wonderful people via that site, and I never went on a bad date with OKC; we always had heaps to talk about. I thankfully found my perfect match for all time via OKC nine years ago, just before match.com ripped up the matching algorithm and the questions and destroyed the site entirely.
It is not a good business model to match people well, and match.com clearly knows that.
Match Group also knows that buying sites that match people well is good business because there's so much room to juice the profits by applying the lessons from their other sites to them, and the valuations will be relatively low relative to user numbers...
Owned by Match? Yes, along with Hinge, Meetic, Tinder, and several smaller ones. The only big player outside of Match is Bumble (which also owns Badoo).
Of the two, Bumble seems to be the slightly less evil one (fun tidbit: Bumble at least used to value a lifetime premium subscription at roughly the same amount as 6 individual months subscription, which tells us something about the expected lifetime value of their users...), but their both of course profiting wildly of exploitative practices.
To run a business you either need to show ads, have everyone pay, or have a freemium model where it can be used for free but some portion of users pay.
It’s easy to imagine making a better service by removing all of the parts that fit what I just described. I could make a better Instagram if it didn’t show any ads and was free for everyone. I don’t think my developers or hosting providers would want to work for free though.
The reason dating apps have this freemium model is because building a large pool of users is important to their success. Most people will not pay for an app if a free alternative exists. Most people hate ads. So the product which wins will always be the one lets people get started without paying, bringing in the largest dating pool.
There have been many dating app businesses that tried models where everyone pays the same flat fee. Most either converted to freemium or disappeared. There are still some niche social apps that use their expense and difficulty of getting an invite as a selling point, but they target very niche audiences because they’ll never be mainstream.
Your friend just discovered one of the harder realities of dating apps: Your odds of getting a response from an individual profile is very low. Swiping on a lot of profiles is necessary. For people who get easily frustrated by these odds and who get angry at having to pay for anything they’re going to be generally very frustrated with the apps in general.
I recently married, and when registering the person at the registry office asked which dating site we met via, and was surprised to hear it was an "old school" one (Badoo) rather than Bumble or Hinge. The notion that it might not have been a dating site wasn't in the cards at all.
Yes, we know why. The problem is that the incentives this creates for dating apps are among the worst around. Many sites have business models where they paywall is locking away content or functionality that is desirable, but few other types of sites benefit nearly as much not by just locking away content or features, but by actively making the site functionality worse for everyone - including for the paid users, who may get e.g. priority access but are still wading through a sewer of zombie profiles and other effects of the user hostile monetisation.
As for ads being such a big problem, I'm not convinced - we've had several reasonably successful dating sites that did well with ads instead of or in addition to freemium.
The biggest challenge to that model flourishing is that Match Group tends to buy them and start locking away the features and pushing more towards the subscriptions. E.g. Plenty of Fish was mostly ad funded until Match Group bought them, OkCupid more mixed, but then Match Group bought them.
I'm not blaming the founders of those. If I started a site like that and Match Group offered to throw money at me, I'd probably sell too, knowing I'd gotten their attention and they'd probably do their best to clobber me if not.
You will get more limited growth if ad funded compared to what you can squeeze out of maximally frustrated men. And as a result you'll be a more attractive acquisition target for Match Group to snatch up at a bargain knowing they can drive up margins by enshittifying you, and you'll have lower margins to fight them with if you don't sell.
> To run a business you either need to show ads, have everyone pay, or have a freemium model where it can be used for free but some portion of users pay.
True, but there are still alternatives.
This would be niche, but a self-hosted solution could be made for the more technically minded to use and network. The dating-net. Where efficiency and getting off the app are the priority. no profit seeking, no ads, no perverse incentives.
As long as that government is benevolent enough to avoid demographic engineering. Singapore is a fine melting pot, but I'd probably avoid using a government-run dating app in both my home and my current country.
Spending a couple decades with the government putting it's thumb on the scale trying to get people who score high on government metrics to pair up with other people who score high on government metrics seems like a great way to start a civil war a couple generations down the line.
But I'm sure the marriages will be stable all the way there so there's that.
If you do a good job - all the people find partners, and leave, and you need to find new people to join
If you do a bad job - all the people see it as desparate, and leave, and you need to find new people to join
It's a high churn environment so there's no real way to make money from... er... bums on seats.. so there's no real choice but to make some sort of barrier forcing people to spend money
There is an amusing irony in this approach to marriage promotion: who isn't already married in Singapore? I've been told that the city's 30 year old gay and lesbian crowd is treated to a lot of fancy dates at public expense.
Gale-Shapley, used in this service, has the property that one side ("proposing" side) is guaranteed their most advantageous stable match while the other side is guaranteed their worst possible stable match.
I've never heard this discussed or mentioned as a drawback because it's Nobel Prize winning and "stable" is a shorthand for "fair". Even though there's many unique stable matches that each offer participants different utilities even if individual participants don't have incentives to change their pairing.
In practice, the more powerful party seems to be the proposing side, e.g. hospitals are the "proposing side" when using Gale-Shapeley to match w/ med school students and get their ideal students.
I wonder if anyone who works on dating apps knows if men or women are the preferred side? And is there any research on stable matching that ensures equity (or ideally arbitrary distribution of utility) between the two groups in their stable matches?
Are there keywords to search for to read more? This is the first time I've heard about this! This is super interesting, what are a few well known other stable matches people deeper into this talk about?
The problem is it's a lattice and not fully ordered. There are cases where there are two or more pairings that are worse for women and better for men, but we cannot determine which pairing is superior to the other overall.
Given how women initiate most divorces, it's probably best to set it up so they are the proposing side.
But this isn't raw Gale-Shapley-- the participants aren't ranking all hundreds/thousands of others. In particular, the preference matrix is based on identical mutual compatibility scores, so there's a unique stable solution (not multiple stable ones!), and there's no "side" that benefits, since the solution is identical no matter who does the "proposing".
I don't think you can measure love at all, and certainly not guess it based on some info you can type into your phone, so that's rules out before we even get started.
If the goal is successful relationships, then probably?
If I have 10/10 love for Halle Berry, and she has 4/10 love for my Jeff-Bezos-looking ass, it's the 4/10 that's going to dictate whether we live happily ever after. So our mutual compatibility is probably well below 10/10.
If stats from dating websites are to be believed, all women tend to flock on all the same tiny percentage of men and ignore the rest. If women initiate, I’m afraid you will see only a few men getting any pairing. Men are likely to be less picky as we see in the wild.
> If stats from dating websites are to be believed, all women tend to flock on all the same tiny percentage of men and ignore the rest
This is absolutely not an accidental phenomenon, this is the optimal outcome for dating apps, because that's the only way to prevent women from finding what they are looking for too quickly (and then leaving the app).
I have been in the space for several years - believe me:
NO dating executive thinks like "women leaving too early because they found what they searched". This sentence does not exist in any of the teams.
Instead, they fear that women are leaving too early because of traffic they bought and that they have a bad experience and leaving, so they are no more a magnet to other males to swiper their credit card for a new subscription.
> If stats from dating websites are to be believed, all women tend to flock on all the same tiny percentage of men and ignore the rest.
These are on platforms where you have profile pics and jobs, front and center on your profile, and the algorithm learns from your preferences based on that. The questions on this platform seem to suggest that the algorithm matches based on anything but that, so perhaps we have different, more open-minded outcomes on what a good partner for someone is like rather than who the ideal man/woman is like.
In the UK male plus joint is roughly the same as female.
You also need to take the reasons into account as well as why. There are multiple reasons for this. The better off partner has more to lose from divorce, women tend to get custody of children, they might have different feelings of obligation to keep a marriage going (I cannot extrapolate this to other men, but I felt an obligation not to file for divorce until I had exhausted all other possibilities), social pressures and responses are different, etc.
> I've never heard this discussed or mentioned as a drawback because it's Nobel Prize winning and "stable" is a shorthand for "fair".
You've never seen this discussed as a drawback? I've seen it mentioned quite a bit. For instance, it came up on the last big thread on this just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915825
This metric/logic equation does not exist in any dating company, also I highly suspect that anyone working there has hear of the term.
Here is why:
A dating sites primary KPI are mainly "new signups per day" and "subscriptions signed per day". For a lot of reasons listed above,dating sites in general _cant_ever_ work for the majority of people.(yes,there is this one neighbour who is happily married, they exist, sure, but this is not the majority)
Integrating something like Gale-Shapley would require your company to focus on othe matching part and integrate it somehow - but there is no reason for you to do so, because if you keep the primary KPI in the correct range, you are printing money, regardless if your matching algo is scientic sophisticated or not. So why bother?
Apart from that - also this algo cant check for chemical compatibility and friendship compatibility.
The biggest issues in Korea dating is young men either (1) don't have enough money to date (because local women expect men to paying for everything) or (2) women reject men with old-fashioned social views. In my personal experience, comparing the most developed places in Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, Singapore), young Korean men are the most like their fathers with out-of-date social views.
If a young Korean woman wants to have a few kids, without living in grueling poverty - is that possible with a husband who's not in the top 1% of earners? If not - then ignoring the 99% may be a want-to-be-mom's least bad strategy. :(
Are you native Korean or deeply tied to the culture? Else, this reads like silly Internet hyperbole. You have clowned yourself with this post. Literally, you think that only 1% of Korea can afford to raise multiple children? In truth, many choose to hyper-concentrate their attention and resources on a single child. As a result, they do have replacement rate for their population. However, lots of Koreans outside of Seoul also choose to have more than one child because the economic pressures are much lower.
Entirely dismissing how important looks, vibes, personality are in relationships. Not even dating -- if someone smells, you're not going to be incentives to make friends with them. This seems to me to just be trodding the same pseudoscientific route as MBTI personality tests, trying to condense a person into a list of multiple choice questions. That will never work. No algorithm can do it. Social interaction is not a solved game.
It's a shame that they deduce your ranking just from the questions. I think the algorithm would be perfect if paired with a manual ranking by the user.
Yes, but someone who looks, vibes and smells right can still be totally wrong for you. I often thought that online dating was inefficient because my eyes, ears and nose can rule out most potential mates without even thinking, but it works the other way too: I've had many partners I've enjoyed being physical with but would never want to settle down and start a family or anything (then again, I'm not a breeder at all, so take that with a pinch of salt). So it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. You need all things to be right, and this surely can only be better than e.g. Tinder, where you see only pictures.
I think this is the key point. Put differently: Vibe matters. I cannot tell you how many times that I match for a date online, then less than ten minutes after meeting them, you think: "Oh, this will never work." Example: Photos are heavily photoshopped or old/out-of-date, overweight, weird/odd body language, etc. Humans are infinitely sensitive to a million different things that are impossible to authentically transmit via primarily photography-based online dating.
If I met them in real life first (cafe, supermarket, park, etc.), you can politely disconnect and move on if something seems off. The more that I do online dating, the more that I see this "vibe wall". Since third spaces aren't really coming back, I'm pretty sure that speed dating (or assisted group dating) is key. Sure, it is uncomfortable to meet many people so quickly (say an hour or two), it helps to get over the vibe wall. It could act like an artificial third space, but with a romantic intent.
I have an idea for a dating app: What if people could only make videos using in-app video recorder (and clipper)? This would completely remove the problem of photoshopping/filters. Plus, video can much better transmit "vibe" compared to photos and "profile". Example of something fun: Show a short video that is trending on TikTok (hand picked by staff), then ask someone to react to it. You can do the green screen effect, just like TikTok. It could be a nice way to visit someone's personality and check their vibe.
The marriage rates of these countries is not really the issue. Much of the remaining difference between East/Southeast Asia and the West is actually births out of wedlock, which the region still heavily stigmatizes.
As Singaporean commenters have said, I think this is more of a positive eugenics scheme.
> In short, stable matches mean nothing when nobody is committed and the best options might exist outside of the matchmaking pool
This is wrong. Stable matches still mean something, and in fact probably mean quite a lot.
You are given a much better match than a random pairing. If you still aren't interested, you can decline. If you go on a date and it doesn't work out, you can decline.
Nothing forces you to use this process, it is just an offer of a significantly better than random matching to what you might prefer.
It doesn't even need to account for preferences not covered by the questionnaire.
I thought incels are white right wingers, first time I see this
term in a non-white context. Southern Poverty Law Center is listing them as a hate group for example so by definition incels can’t be black.
I think the algorithm is almost a distraction here. Gale-Shapley works nicely when preferences are reasonably well-defined and participants are actually committed to the matching process. Dating has neither property. People are terrible at predicting who they'll have chemistry with, and everyone has outside options.
Tangent: I’ve often wondered why governments don’t provide a ‘dating’ service for employers and employees, or even better some kind of career development and management service for citizens. Use a bit of institutional wisdom to help people make the best of themselves from school age onwards, help people with similar or complementary skills and interests to connect … that kind of thing.
> I’ve often wondered why governments don’t provide a ‘dating’ service for employers and employees, or even better some kind of career development and management service for citizens.
Don’t they? Here in the UK at least participation in programs like that is a requirement of unemployment benefits. One has to attend a job center where one is given advice, sometimes training can get enrolled in trainung and etc. Not saying that they do a great job of it but they seems to at least try to do what you describe. At least nominally.
Interesting the different takes different nations take over dropping birth rates. I posted a story here on the Lisdoonvarna dating festival in Ireland. This is a village with a lot of bars wanting to encourage tourism. It has had so much success that the government is now sponsoring it. Quite different than America where the government mandates something as opposed to funding something that has proven successful in a given area.
Social media had a story on an American lady disappointed with dating choices in her city who went over there for fun, met an Irishman and in less than a year of transatlantic dating got married.
Bet you have just as much a chance of finding a life partner there than any online dating service, probably much better.
I think this would be better than commercial services, which have all the wrong incentives.
I would think just a coarse sorting would do, paired with a free meal. Every couple of weeks, you go for a random date with a somewhat well paired person, and see what happens. Maybe you don't meet the love of your life, but you will meet someone roughly your age living in the same society, a perspective worth having regardless of whether you're compatible.
However, if you know anyone from Singapore, you must think this is a rather small plaster on a gaping wound.
Singapore is like a permanent examination hall. Everyone is competing to do well on exams, and then they try to get the best internships, and then the best jobs. It's not exactly conducive to starting a family. You'll lose a step in the rat race, and then your kid will need to join this rat race.
I want to agree, but the fact it's state-run / promoted gives me the ick. Or, it gives me a lot of conflicted feelings / opinions, let's put it that way.
Like, here in Europe we've got right-wing parties on the rise that have this conspiracy theory that the foreigners are moving here en masse to replace the locals (because of ??? they never explained, our jobs, benefits and women I suppose). So they spend a lot of time and effort fearmongering about the for'ners coming here and bring in laws and policies to keep them out.
Meanwhile they don't seem to be doing anything about those that already live here - you'd think these right-wing, own-people-first types would do anything to ensure people living here would thrive and reproduce. But no free child care, no major economic reform to allow single incomes to buy a house, none of that. Because ultimately it's not about foreigners or "own people first", it's about self-enrichment, got mine fuck you.
>That’s an irrational reaction, probably conditioned by ideology.
And yours isn't?
Like it doesn't take much beyond a room temperature IQ to look at the arc of just about every government these days and make an estimation of where it's going without some substantial unforeseen change of course.
>A well-run state has been perhaps one of the most successful enabling factors for human flourishing in human history.
Historically the states that have dabbled in this area of policy area has been "well run" in only the most dishonest "they accomplished their short term goals" sense of the phrase.
>careful, we have a very intelligent individual over here
If you want to take it as a well deserved slight in your direction that's fine but the point was the opposite. Just about anyone can make the insight I did. You don't have to be a genius to see what's going on here.
Many people trust the government for policing, military, central banking. Some not.
Many trust them for health care and education, many not.
Very very few don’t trust the government for anything. So for this random example, a dating service, it feels like it’s ideological conditioning (otherwise the OP would explain why it feels bad for them).
Not if you think that your government isn't looking out for your best interests. A well run state is exactly what we need, but rarely what we have. Instead we see rising authoritarianism, less transparency, open bribery, more frequent and blatant lying, less accountability, more corruption, democratic backsliding, attacks on civil rights. etc. All that stuff is going to breed skepticism, and it should.
You're right, and you'd think seeing all the ways our government is vulnerable to these problems would result in reforms to fix and prevent those issues, but it seems like a lot of people have given up even trying. Learned helplessness I guess.
Also the more successful the corruption and break down of government and its institutions are, the more necessary skepticism becomes. For example, you might have a lot of faith in the experts at the CDC and the FDA until those agencies get taken over and run by people who oppose it's mission and the workers with integrity resign or get fired or get censored and suddenly you've got states scrambling to create things like the West Coast Health Alliance and the Northeast Public Health Collaborative to try to get the actual work done and get real information out to a public that's being misinformed.
Are you implying that there aren't a massive number of foreigners moving to Europe? roughly 10% of the people living in the EU were born outside of it.
Glad to see that it requires cooperative partners, and not just parents. And that the matched partners are not automatically engaged.
Let's see what other, more "progressive" governments will think about that. Lots of possibilities in government-run partner matching for out future AI overlords.
It's almost as though "economic freedom" (whatever that means) and the government schmutzing in citizens' personal affairs are completely unrelated things!
> with government workers set to be the first batch of daters
Oh yeah, the government workers, a group of people known for their prolific dating and people skills. This will go so well.
"Any hard Nos for you?", well, those who ignored the calls to their number is a no brainer big No, and also those who don't know how to fill their SMFF-29f-A form, which is different from SMFF-29F-A. Everyone here hates people who don't know the difference between SMFF-29f-A and SMFF-29F-A.
There are lots of overweight and/or tatt'ed people in Singapore! In general, I have found people get a lot fatter once you travel from Thailand/Cambodia/Laos to Peninsular Malaysia/Singapore/Indonesia. I don't know if it genetics, food, or "lifestyle". And loads of Singaporeans are up to their eyes in debt because they want to look flashy when they are young -- designer clothes, jewelry, bags, shoes, cars, etc. For me, the quickest way to know if a Singaporean is broke is if they are young, have a mid-to-shit job, but are wearing flashy clothes.
the authors final recommendation about invest in offline third places is very true in modern Singapore
Modern dating problem comes from too much online platforms trying to sell you a lifestyle and tell you what you should have. People do not need another online platform to solve the problem caused by online platforms
Also governments should investigate how to incentive real life dating, or foster situations in which people can know each other more organically than by the magazine / algorithm driven online world. Many service of speed date, dinners and night activity already exist in the private market, have a government sponsor on the back can be a valid alternative as you would have potential access to better places (public palaces, museum, squares) that gets reserved for the purpose or you can explore economic incentives. Like public workers have right of a holiday day more if the go to a day government date. People are very busy, overworked and serious dating is often seen as another effort sucking activity, so incentives on those sides have potential.
How many people see their ideal match and get humbled (or emboldened) by surprising results?
Since the match pool will never be exactly 1:1, do you do anything at all about the least matchable people?
Would it become possible to gauge whether changed answers are efforts to widen one's net or legitimate personal growth and/or a bit of self-reflection?
If the dating service detects deceptive answering, is it correct to just pair these people with other dishonest users?
Can you gather any feedback from unsuccessful dates and apply a "Je n'sais quoi" factor when calculating their compatibility with future matches?
Are there detectable signals of someone's "Je n'sais quoi" factor in their profile metadata? (e.g. People answering the full survey in less than 15 minutes at 3 a.m. are 28% less desireable on average)
While it's good to grow together with a partner, how would such an algorithm be able to determine that an ambitious person will not be paired with a long-term apathetic? (I do realize they have the, "always working on yourself?" question. Still... people change.)
Is this a ploy to get more applicants to join the government staff, if the pilot remains closed to the public?
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One thing I particularly liked about early OKCupid was the ability to rank how much someone's answer mattered. For instance, I don't particularly mind someone's exercise and organization preferences, and it's fine if we didn't match because they DO have expectations from me in these areas which I fail to meet. I would hope they implement this as well, although a description of the site in The Straits Times suggests this nuance isn't there.
One other thing the Singapore dating service has in common with OKCupid is at least a few poorly worded questions: "What’s a country that’s ruined all other countries for you?" is akin to OKC's "In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?" You can't split hairs, "tons of negative excitement, a sudden spike in anxiety/dread, instantaneous long-term shift in priorities, etc.; although the use of atomic weapons thoroughly horrifies me," as a Yes/No response, just like you can't explain whether the country that ruined others did so via greatness (Spain with its paella, beaches, and music) or loss of faith in humanity (Ireland after a stolen laptop and being verbally threatened by an elementary-aged child while I was walking with a baby stroller).
From a few comments in the article and here, I'm wondering how viable Singapore is as a country for typical residents (vs. the 1%) to have children.
If (say) both would-be parents in a couple have to work long hours to afford their own food, housing, & such - yeah, NO. They obviously can't have many kids.
Middle class life is pretty reasonable in Singapore. You can have two working parents with boring, average corporate jobs (the economy is very strong in Singapore), then you live in modestly priced public housing, ride public transit everywhere, and send your kids to public schools. It seems fine to me. And the middle class isn't something rare in Singapore; it is most of Singapore. You can also hire a cheap domestic helper to cook most of your meals, clean your home, and shuttle the kids to and from school and activities. This is a very common pattern in Singapore.
How might things look if a couple has 3+ kids, and perhaps only one parent working outside the home? Because if Singapore actually wants to reach break-even from where their numbers are now, that needs to be a realistic scenario for a whole lotta people.
> How might things look if a couple has 3+ kids, and perhaps only one parent working outside the home?
Why is it important to only have one working parent? In most rich countries, two working parents is pretty normal now. In Singapore, you can hire a domestic helper or two.
Singapore is so rich and desirable that it can import highly educated people forever. Plus, it is diverse by default/design, so people are quite open to having diverse neighbors.
Where you don't have extended families living together, mom being able to afford to "work" full-time as a parent/homemaker is a pretty traditional benchmark for being able to afford having several kids.
And are those domestic workers part of the population pool that you're trying to boost the fertility of?
> pretty traditional benchmark for being able to afford having several kids.
Source? I grew up with many middle class families that had 3+ kids and both parents worked. Normally, the father worked a "high intensity" (higher income) job, and the mother worked a "low intensity" (lower income) job. The kids turned out fine. Daycare and extended families can really help.
> And are those domestic workers part of the population pool that you're trying to boost the fertility of?
They are not. They have a work-only visa that cannot be converted into permanent residence nor citizenship. (Hongkong, Taiwan, Israel are similar.) In short: They can work as long as they want as a domestic helper, but they cannot retire in SG/HK/TW/IL. They need to return home when they stop working. It is quite common that they work for the same family for 10+ years. During this time, they return home every 1-2 years. Pregnancy (with their husband) is not unusual. They give birth in their home country, and the child(ren) grows up with the husband or extended family.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 13.2 ms ] threadSingapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906432
That's the actual problem, though (a lack of it)! Above all else, you'll probably overlook a lot and still commit long-term to someone you can trust.
Keep supply of women high because men will pay anything for a chance?
I am very curious how this will be changed in this government platform. Maybe it won't LOL
> Keep supply of women high because men will pay anything for a chance?
Grindr has a different fix.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42609353
But on the other hand, if it appears "too limited" because the most desirable people disappear off quickly because of a successful match, maybe they'll still struggle to keep the users coming back to it even if they're actually doing a better job at matching people up...
Really depends whether the track record (assuming its good) becomes known enough to people, I'd guess.
Tinder side-stepped this issue when they changed to be a hookup site. The downside, of course, is you end up with a bunch of one-night stands instead of stable families producing babies.
Maybe they should have a Rebound app as well.
The societal costs otherwise aren't just the obvious direct costs - there are other things like (in divorces where there are children involved) negative effects on labour force mobility.
There are many situations for which a divorce is better than staying in a bad mariage, but divorce are still obviously costly for society: it drives the housing demand up, the legal process is costly and encumbers courts, single-mom households are more prone to poverty and its negative effects, etc.
The key point is that ideal for individuals (a couple that is happy together) is also the ideal for governments.
Or at least to start practicing how to make babies.
I give it about a month before they start gaming the algorithm to pair people who are likely to be on government benefits with people who can support them.
You make $150k, congratulations all your matches are McDonalds crew members.
You make $200k, the same but now they're all mentally ill because the algorithm deems you capable of supporting thyat too.
The important distinction here is no one is forced to marry anyone. This is entirely optional.
Desperation is from government, because many people just checked out. There are many nicer activities, such as hiking.
> unbiased and impartial judge and coach.
Gov has super strong biases, just the way they punish (or not punish at all) different groups, for the same crime.
> forced to marry anyone.
In every practical way you will be forced to marry. Common law marriage, alimony...
They got your birth record, your education records, your bank account details, your employment record. They can write themselves a warrant to dig through your life. The government already knows all this.
>chooses a mate for you.
You're not forced to marry whoever you match with in the app.
>This is beyond incentives, it is just perverse!
ok this is just slop
Asia has different rules. Premarital sex without latter marrying is a rape there.
Of course, a lack of a match is not the only thing that prevents people from having kids, but I'm curious what the impact of an optimal matching service would be on fertility rates.
edit: I think governments might do well to provide funding for dating apps (whether privately or publicly owned) based on how many matches from the app actually lead to children. Completely flip the classical incentives on their head. Should be easy enough to ask if newborns were a product of a participating app as part of the birth certification process.
Fertility is going to 0 and that's a good thing, we need a fresh slate.
The modern trend of most families with 0-2 kids isn’t sustainable. We don’t need to go back to 5+ being the norm but a self stable society needs to be able to offset non parents thus requiring 3+ children families to be quite common.
Which, in times of working from home means 4 bedrooms, 2 offices, 1 living room.
If we want them to have 3+ children, we need to reduce these sources of friction of doing so.
"Just stop preferring that"? Good luck enforcing that.
I guess this will work for something like 10-20%? Maybe? (Speaking from a very german cultural background)
Even then, it would not solve any problems here, really.
On one hand, all of this is understandable, but on the other hand these policies do indeed raise the cost of having children.
Fuck that.
Why do you need an entire room each for an office? I work in a corner of a bedroom, and have previously had a desk in a living room. I know lots of people who do the same. I know few families where both parents work from home. Where more than one person works from home they can share an office.
If people work from home to a large extent, less office space is required, so the cost of land should go down. It does not because most people are not working from home.
No one said that one cannot make do. One can always make do.
That's a lot of bodies.
The median size of a new single-family home in the U.S. in 1970 was 1,500 square feet. No cellphones, no internet, no expensive organic food, etc etc.
Lots of people don't want kids these days relative to 50 years ago, but even among those who do, they're delaying the process, often to the point where it becomes less ideal due to age. Many people who wanted kids when they were younger end up not having them as a result (and many who want them haven't had them yet).
Having a partner (or partners) to do it with is a significant factor for many, among other factors like concerns about affording food and housing for oneself, let alone for additional dependants.
As a worse case example, you could succeed by matching people least likely to abort, but most likely to have multiple partners.
Even without my personal experience being used, we see the outcomes and decisions made by dating firms.
Firms have to satisfy their investors/shareholders.
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
- we get paid for date $1
- we get paid for second date $10
- we get paid for proposal $100
- we get paid for marriage $1000
- we pay for divorce $1500
- we get paid for first child $500
- we get paid for second child $1000
- we get paid for nth child $2000 * (n - 2)
I do think society would be better off in many ways if more people had kids but the current dialogue about it is offputting.
If you couple up with someone you are evaluated in a compatibility period to which if you argue you get given a child, if you argue again, you get given a second child haha.
I have been through a couple of online dating and personality usually came first, so by the time appearance was revealed, we already could not care much. She was not my type, I was not her type, but that affected nothing.
The reason it did not work out is financial and logistics (different country, I have MS, I am heavily dependent on healthcare, and so forth), not because of any moral failing or what have you.
It seems most the people I know who are still single mention Hinge.
I feel like any dating site that doesn't put an onus on leading with appearance will be self selecting for people who value connection and personality over appearance. It wouldn't surprise me if the frequency of higher quality matches was higher in niches like that
You should try AFK dating sometime, it's even worse! Out of all the women I've met, only 0.00000001218% been interested enough to date and marry me, and I didn't even touch any of the apps! Brutal.
Sampling bias. How many did you ask?
And so while we can't fix that, guys can certainly improve their chances of being in that 5%. The thing is, what a picture shows on an online dating profile really is a lot down to you, irrespective of your actual appearance.
But men have a horrible ability to select pictures that are either incredibly low effort and poor quality, or the type of pictures that men would find other men cool in, rather than what will attract women, before even considering how you compete on actual appearance. When I spent some time figuring out my profiles back in the day, my match rate went up by a large factor.
That 5% is static - individual guys can improve their chances of being in the 5%, but that pushes out others already in the 5%.
IOW, if women are only looking at the top 5% of men, there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men.
And that was exactly my point. You can punch far above your metaphorical weight very easily because most guys hardly tries.
> IOW, if women are only looking at the top 5% of men, there's very little you can do to make them look at the top 50% of men.
I didn't come even close to suggesting otherwise.
Like? I haven't tried online dating in a long time, but all guys I knew had normal profiles and rarely got any matches let alone dates.
>most guys hardly tries
That's irrelevant. Women on dating apps are still only going to interact with the top guys that are above their league, let's say a 9/10. Whether there's more who don't even try, doesn't help you at all. Like if you now try and you go from a 4/10 to a 6/10, you're still below the 9/10 throeshold the top guys have set the bar at. Women don';t choose on statistical distribution, thinking that there's only a handful of guys at the top so they'll have to lower the bar to find a mate, meaning you'll have a chance by going to a 6/10.
"Normal profiles" for men typically means hardly trying. It means poorly lit pictures. It means bad angles. Often it means things that instantly puts most of the women off, like shirtless pics [1], and poorly written profiles.
I've never had any problems getting matches and dates, but I did have to work for it. That meant ensuring I had good quality pictures, and ensuring my profile matched what women on the given site that I might want to date said the were looking for.
I went from rarely if every getting matches and dates to getting a steady stream of them not by magically getting better looking, but by improving my profile.
Just fixing the writing multiplied the number of dates I got by a decent factor.
> That's irrelevant. Women on dating apps are still only going to interact with the top guys that are above their league, let's say a 9/10. Whether there's more who don't even try, doesn't help you at all.
The point is that those "9/10"'s also mostly don't try (I'd argue most 9/10's aren't on the dating sites, so really you're competing against "dating site 9/10's" who are mostly going to be relatively regular guys who know how to pick a good photo)
[1] Shirtless pics works if you're built - it worked for me after I'd spent 10 years in the gym powerlifting, it did nothing before that - and are posting on a hookup focused site like Tinder, and have a profile written to focus on giving off that vibe. It does not work well on a more "serious" dating site even if you're seriously muscular. But still if you look at the guys profiles, you'll still see a steady stream of them. Most men going on dating sites really ought to take a look at the competition, and then do pretty much the opposite of what most guys are doing.
No, they had good pics. What then? When can we just admit short stature, ugly face, is just not attractive to women on dating apps, and lighting conditions, angles and all that and everything is just cope.
Who had?
My experience from looking at how men presents themselves to gauge "the competition" back when I was single was that most guys have absolute garbage photos on dating profiles.
> When can we just admit short stature, ugly face, small, jawline, etc. are just not attractive to women on dating apps, and lighting conditions, angles and all that and everything is just cope.
You're never going to make the bottom 5% look like the top 5%, but you can certainly move yourself very significantly up. To take your examples, if you're short don't post pictures of yourself next to things that highlight how short you are. If your face is ugly, don't highlight it, and so on.
What is cope is to dismiss that your failure to get responses can't at least to a very significant degree be mitigated by presenting yourself better.
It's how guys decide to keep posting the utter shit pictures most men put on their dating profiles.
Seriously: Ask women to help you pick photos or for advice on how to do better. Worst case, hire a female photographer.
"6 feet, 6 inches, 6 figures", "ewww he's got an ANDROID? ick!" - Eugenicists.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473453/why-green-text-bub...
https://leafandcore.com/2019/08/24/green-bubbles-are-a-turn-...
https://blog.seeking.com/the-green-bubble-deal-breaker
https://gizmodo.com/im-buying-an-iphone-because-im-ashamed-o...
https://thetab.com/2026/02/27/expert-reveals-shocking-reason...
Was pretty prevalent 2018 onward. If they were 16 in 2018 to 2019 then they'd be 24 today so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if that teenage bias carried forward for many young adults.
None of those things are why you can’t get a date.
> Thanks "AWFUL" (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal) women!
This is though.
It's perfectly valid for women to want men who are willing to put in more effort than the barest minimum.
Historically it's been solved using religion and families enforcing monogamy in society, like in the past 2000 years of human history, to ensure most men and women get to find a pair to make a family, along with explaining them the math that if they wish to find happiness and not die alone surrounded by cats, then they can't all share the same top 5% of men, and so will need to settle for a realistic average man instead of gigachad.
Yes, but everyone isn't doing that. You'd think men would, but I suggest you ask around some women on their experience of the quality of mens dating dating profiles.
THe top % are. Which is the yardstick you're being judged on, even when you're not in the top %.
If every man groomed himself and presented just "good" portraits and captures in his dating profile pics, that 5% would probably improve.
I'm a hetero man, but I've formed a fake female profile just to investigate. Wow... my competition is 95% disappointing. My non-existent labia recoiled in dismay. "May or may not be an axe murderer." "Thinks sports fanwear is dressing to impress." "I just killed this animal! Date me!" "Dude, do you realize you are grimacing?"
Let me tell you, women are waiting with bated breath to hear you explain this to them.
Last I checked, most western societies don’t allow polygamy and most people still prefer monogamy. You don’t have to explain anything to anyone, women get it. They are just happier living by themselves than surrounded by dudes who make condescending remarks about them dying surrounded by cats. I guess maybe we can explain that to men.
Oh no, how will we ever deal without billions upon billions of abusers and molesters.
I was raised as a classical cis male. I have spent most of my time in male-exclusive or male-majority circles.
I have yet to find a male with even a sliver of moral or ethical behavior. Behind closed doors, in a male-only environment, you discover the truth about males. There is not a single salvageable male.
"Aren't you a male, too?" Do you think I haven't tried to kill myself? It's surprisingly difficult. I'm trying to get as far away from masculinity as possible.
>"Aren't you a male, too?" Do you think I haven't tried to kill myself? It's surprisingly difficult.
Brother, you need help.
Are you saying women can't understand the basic arithmetic of pairing, on their own? That they can't all realistically settle down with the top % of men?
> They are just happier living by themselves
Says who? Polls and studies show a massive drop in womens' happiness since the 70s along with a massive increase in use of antidepressants and SSRIs, especially amongst childless women over the age of 40 in the present. Google it, ChatGPT it, Gemini it,etc. Is that womens' happiness looks like to you?
Do you really think I am saying that? Are you unfamiliar with sarcasm, or do you need it labeled with /s to understand that someone is being sarcastic? Genuine question because I thought my meaning was pretty clear.
Similarly with the other point you quoted. Yes, women are happier living by themselves than with men who feel only contempt for women. The worst thing in life is not to end up alone, it’s not ending up selected out of the gene pool, the worst thing in life is to end up chained to a bad partner.
By the way I did chatGPT your claims and, unsurprisingly, they range in accuracy and substantiation. The claim about childless women over 40 being particularly unhappy is especially badly substantiated (particularly since it mixes those who are willingly childless with those who wanted children but couldn’t have them). In fact, older men who are childless seem to be unhappier than older women who are childless.
It’s interesting to see the narrative in men’s spaces about how dumb women are and how they’re going to end up dying alone surrounded by cats and how the men pushing this narrative don’t realize how supremely unattractive this makes them to women.
I don’t know if you’re capable of actually hearing this, but I will repeat it for you again. Talking about women like they’re idiots and expressing this kind of contempt towards them makes you supremely unattractive to women. And yes, they absolutely can tell that this is what you think, no matter how well you think you hide it in person. I hope that, if not today, then maybe a year from now or five years from now, you will sit with yourself and really consider that idea.
Why makes you think that? It seems much more likely to me that women are selecting whatever profiles that interest them, which would be >5% if potential matches made better profiles. I've seen the women experience of dating apps from women friends, and indeed men profile quality is abysmal (my bisexual and lesbian friends seem to swipe on a much higher proportion of women profiles FWIW), to the point that 5% even seems pretty high once you also take into account personal preferences.
6/10 would get a response and some, dates.
The apps make it so there's no conversation and it's all about your profile.
Way more difficult to get noticed.
But my point was that most men are doing such a shit job at presenting themselves on their profiles that it isn't that difficult to massively improve your odds by making a profile that is better than average.
Spending more than 5 minutes ensuring you have a profile picture that is decently lit, taken from an angle that present you well, and that you look like you're capable of taking care of yourself is a good start, but judging from conversations with a lot of women while I was dating, that is a high bar to clear for most guys on dating sites.
90% of the guys had a photo of them with their pickup truck, a pic of them drinking heavily, and a pic of them giving the middle finger.
Not in a particularly redneck or rural area either. Lowest effort possible.
It is still effort if you make a decent profile on places like Tinder, because Tinder is very much intentionally trying to frustrate you to make you pay, but even just having a female friend you could ask to help pick a photo that won't actively repel every woman that ever sees your profile ups your chances so much...
We ended up dating for 5 years after that after meeting this person.
I miss the old internet.
Men need an equivalent to political lesbianism.
Gay men have excellent marriage/partnersahip statistics. They stay together, they don't (or tolerate/accept) "cheating", very low physical abuse, very happy/satisfying relationships etc statistics.
Lesbian women have literally the opposite. The memes about domestic violence and other serious problems among lesbian communities would be funny if they weren't so true.
When I see these sad "women are from Venus, men from Mars" style of comments, all I can feel is that this is a sad truth of the universe.
The men who enjoy showing off pictures of their fishing/hunting haul. The men who use android phones, the men who want to show themselves topless (even in contexts where this makes sense). These man are not "low quality" or even "less desirable" partners in any objective sense because their photography choices are not amicable to women's desires. Women account for like 80% of consumer spending and advertising/marketing folks know some extremely uncomfortable truths about group-think/hive-mind mentality among women. These men should celebrate that they are showing their authentic selves, not the contorted version they have to repeatedly summon to satisfy foids.
Basically, men should actively be proud of our achievements, and any who can ignore societies intense biphobia should lean into the masculine side of their desires, as their relationship satisfaction will likely go significantly up.
What.
Have you ever met a gay male? Maybe even talked to him?
Gay males are still males at the end of the day so they always land themselves in the most damaging relationships possible. Males already cause tons of harm by themselves, so sum them together and you get a truly dreary mess.
There's a reason there are so many gay males who are so homophobic they make Evangelicals seem like a Pride Parade Organizing Committee.
I was like that. I simply managed to realize that the problem wasn't homosexuality, but rather that it's always been males.
Dating males in general is a form of self-harm if I'm being honest with you. I'm bisexual and I do still feel attracted to males but I am at a good enough spot that I don't want to hurt myself that way.
They are not objectively "low quality", but they are objectively less desirable to women if women find them less desirable for it.
You can enjoy leaning into those things all you want, but you are not owed anything from women. They have no obligation to look past how you present yourself. And so if how you present yourself reduces their interest in you, that is on you. If you're fine with that, then by all means go ahead.
For my part, it was a very small sacrifice to spend a couple of hours figuring out which parts of my personality women actually finds attractive, and how to signal that with my pictures and profile text.
It’s whiplash for a lot of guys, and that’s if you’re even savvy enough to clock it.
I don’t think it needs to be any more of a brutal realization than say the existence of say Santa, and yet here we are.
We need to do better about teaching our kids.
I think this line of conversation is a red-herring.
The real problem we have to talk about is the oversupply and surplus of useless and harmful men in the world today.
There simply are way too many males in the world for us to handle appropriately.
Its non better than saying 1% of women are actual people. The same bigotry.
Things are never the same and equivalencies don't exist.
You are wrapping up your bigotry in ideology. You are closer to being a fascist than anyone else here.
[edit] mixed up Plenty of Fish with OKCupid
That's okay - keeping track of all the sites Match Group have bought and trashed is difficult.
The great thing was that it was self-selecting -- the less compatible types answered very few questions and stumbled over anything involving basic general knowledge, logic or ethics. The compatible ones added thoughtful or witty freeform comments to their answers. You could essentially clear all the usual first-few-dates compatibility dances just by running through people's answers.
I met many wonderful people via that site, and I never went on a bad date with OKC; we always had heaps to talk about. I thankfully found my perfect match for all time via OKC nine years ago, just before match.com ripped up the matching algorithm and the questions and destroyed the site entirely.
It is not a good business model to match people well, and match.com clearly knows that.
Na,this should be true for both brands these days?
Of the two, Bumble seems to be the slightly less evil one (fun tidbit: Bumble at least used to value a lifetime premium subscription at roughly the same amount as 6 individual months subscription, which tells us something about the expected lifetime value of their users...), but their both of course profiting wildly of exploitative practices.
To run a business you either need to show ads, have everyone pay, or have a freemium model where it can be used for free but some portion of users pay.
It’s easy to imagine making a better service by removing all of the parts that fit what I just described. I could make a better Instagram if it didn’t show any ads and was free for everyone. I don’t think my developers or hosting providers would want to work for free though.
The reason dating apps have this freemium model is because building a large pool of users is important to their success. Most people will not pay for an app if a free alternative exists. Most people hate ads. So the product which wins will always be the one lets people get started without paying, bringing in the largest dating pool.
There have been many dating app businesses that tried models where everyone pays the same flat fee. Most either converted to freemium or disappeared. There are still some niche social apps that use their expense and difficulty of getting an invite as a selling point, but they target very niche audiences because they’ll never be mainstream.
Your friend just discovered one of the harder realities of dating apps: Your odds of getting a response from an individual profile is very low. Swiping on a lot of profiles is necessary. For people who get easily frustrated by these odds and who get angry at having to pay for anything they’re going to be generally very frustrated with the apps in general.
Now that it's a much bigger business, it makes it much more difficult to actually meet someone.
None of the women I met on these sites worked out long-term. I met my wife through a meetup group where we were friends for a few years first.
I don't think I can accept the idea that having a larger population of users makes it less likely for people to find matches.
As for ads being such a big problem, I'm not convinced - we've had several reasonably successful dating sites that did well with ads instead of or in addition to freemium.
The biggest challenge to that model flourishing is that Match Group tends to buy them and start locking away the features and pushing more towards the subscriptions. E.g. Plenty of Fish was mostly ad funded until Match Group bought them, OkCupid more mixed, but then Match Group bought them.
I'm not blaming the founders of those. If I started a site like that and Match Group offered to throw money at me, I'd probably sell too, knowing I'd gotten their attention and they'd probably do their best to clobber me if not.
You will get more limited growth if ad funded compared to what you can squeeze out of maximally frustrated men. And as a result you'll be a more attractive acquisition target for Match Group to snatch up at a bargain knowing they can drive up margins by enshittifying you, and you'll have lower margins to fight them with if you don't sell.
True, but there are still alternatives.
This would be niche, but a self-hosted solution could be made for the more technically minded to use and network. The dating-net. Where efficiency and getting off the app are the priority. no profit seeking, no ads, no perverse incentives.
Spending a couple decades with the government putting it's thumb on the scale trying to get people who score high on government metrics to pair up with other people who score high on government metrics seems like a great way to start a civil war a couple generations down the line.
But I'm sure the marriages will be stable all the way there so there's that.
If you do a bad job - all the people see it as desparate, and leave, and you need to find new people to join
It's a high churn environment so there's no real way to make money from... er... bums on seats.. so there's no real choice but to make some sort of barrier forcing people to spend money
the major> No, I figure if the Marines wanted me to have a wife they would have issue'd me one!
-Major Payne
edit: isn't a government run dating site like a more gentle handmaid's tale basically?
I don't understand your question.
I've never heard this discussed or mentioned as a drawback because it's Nobel Prize winning and "stable" is a shorthand for "fair". Even though there's many unique stable matches that each offer participants different utilities even if individual participants don't have incentives to change their pairing.
In practice, the more powerful party seems to be the proposing side, e.g. hospitals are the "proposing side" when using Gale-Shapeley to match w/ med school students and get their ideal students.
I wonder if anyone who works on dating apps knows if men or women are the preferred side? And is there any research on stable matching that ensures equity (or ideally arbitrary distribution of utility) between the two groups in their stable matches?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_of_stable_matchings
The problem is it's a lattice and not fully ordered. There are cases where there are two or more pairings that are worse for women and better for men, but we cannot determine which pairing is superior to the other overall.
But this isn't raw Gale-Shapley-- the participants aren't ranking all hundreds/thousands of others. In particular, the preference matrix is based on identical mutual compatibility scores, so there's a unique stable solution (not multiple stable ones!), and there's no "side" that benefits, since the solution is identical no matter who does the "proposing".
Is that modeling the problem correctly? It seems pretty rare for two partners to have equal amounts of love for each other.
If I have 10/10 love for Halle Berry, and she has 4/10 love for my Jeff-Bezos-looking ass, it's the 4/10 that's going to dictate whether we live happily ever after. So our mutual compatibility is probably well below 10/10.
There are far more people unhappily married with 4/10 attraction for each other because it is better being alone.
That's why it needs to be a stable matching instead of "high compatibility matching".
For marrying: I suspect they are about as picky?
This is absolutely not an accidental phenomenon, this is the optimal outcome for dating apps, because that's the only way to prevent women from finding what they are looking for too quickly (and then leaving the app).
NO dating executive thinks like "women leaving too early because they found what they searched". This sentence does not exist in any of the teams.
Instead, they fear that women are leaving too early because of traffic they bought and that they have a bad experience and leaving, so they are no more a magnet to other males to swiper their credit card for a new subscription.
These are on platforms where you have profile pics and jobs, front and center on your profile, and the algorithm learns from your preferences based on that. The questions on this platform seem to suggest that the algorithm matches based on anything but that, so perhaps we have different, more open-minded outcomes on what a good partner for someone is like rather than who the ideal man/woman is like.
In the UK male plus joint is roughly the same as female.
You also need to take the reasons into account as well as why. There are multiple reasons for this. The better off partner has more to lose from divorce, women tend to get custody of children, they might have different feelings of obligation to keep a marriage going (I cannot extrapolate this to other men, but I felt an obligation not to file for divorce until I had exhausted all other possibilities), social pressures and responses are different, etc.
Or that out of all the initiators with college degrees, 90% are women?
does mutual divorce figure into this, and if so, how is one party be both parties having a college degree counted?
But I dunno. Divorce stats tend to be reported with less meaningful stats that are easy to calculate, but don't mean much.
> When filtered to those with a college degree it's 90%
Interesting, but why? I suspect the answer is economics.
You've never seen this discussed as a drawback? I've seen it mentioned quite a bit. For instance, it came up on the last big thread on this just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915825
“The active salesman got better sales than the person that just sat there and accepted offers? Outrageous!!!”
Here is why:
A dating sites primary KPI are mainly "new signups per day" and "subscriptions signed per day". For a lot of reasons listed above,dating sites in general _cant_ever_ work for the majority of people.(yes,there is this one neighbour who is happily married, they exist, sure, but this is not the majority)
Integrating something like Gale-Shapley would require your company to focus on othe matching part and integrate it somehow - but there is no reason for you to do so, because if you keep the primary KPI in the correct range, you are printing money, regardless if your matching algo is scientic sophisticated or not. So why bother?
Apart from that - also this algo cant check for chemical compatibility and friendship compatibility.
These are well defined criteria which can be queried upon.
However the ranking only works if both sides are honest.
You can then still apply your usual filters afterwards, such as smell, looks, vibes.
If I met them in real life first (cafe, supermarket, park, etc.), you can politely disconnect and move on if something seems off. The more that I do online dating, the more that I see this "vibe wall". Since third spaces aren't really coming back, I'm pretty sure that speed dating (or assisted group dating) is key. Sure, it is uncomfortable to meet many people so quickly (say an hour or two), it helps to get over the vibe wall. It could act like an artificial third space, but with a romantic intent.
I have an idea for a dating app: What if people could only make videos using in-app video recorder (and clipper)? This would completely remove the problem of photoshopping/filters. Plus, video can much better transmit "vibe" compared to photos and "profile". Example of something fun: Show a short video that is trending on TikTok (hand picked by staff), then ask someone to react to it. You can do the green screen effect, just like TikTok. It could be a nice way to visit someone's personality and check their vibe.
But if it helps likeminded people to find each other, then it absolutely has some value.
especially for country like korea and japan ???? Yeah bro they need it
As Singaporean commenters have said, I think this is more of a positive eugenics scheme.
This is wrong. Stable matches still mean something, and in fact probably mean quite a lot.
You are given a much better match than a random pairing. If you still aren't interested, you can decline. If you go on a date and it doesn't work out, you can decline.
Nothing forces you to use this process, it is just an offer of a significantly better than random matching to what you might prefer.
It doesn't even need to account for preferences not covered by the questionnaire.
Don’t they? Here in the UK at least participation in programs like that is a requirement of unemployment benefits. One has to attend a job center where one is given advice, sometimes training can get enrolled in trainung and etc. Not saying that they do a great job of it but they seems to at least try to do what you describe. At least nominally.
https://matchmakerireland.com/
Social media had a story on an American lady disappointed with dating choices in her city who went over there for fun, met an Irishman and in less than a year of transatlantic dating got married.
Bet you have just as much a chance of finding a life partner there than any online dating service, probably much better.
I would think just a coarse sorting would do, paired with a free meal. Every couple of weeks, you go for a random date with a somewhat well paired person, and see what happens. Maybe you don't meet the love of your life, but you will meet someone roughly your age living in the same society, a perspective worth having regardless of whether you're compatible.
However, if you know anyone from Singapore, you must think this is a rather small plaster on a gaping wound.
Singapore is like a permanent examination hall. Everyone is competing to do well on exams, and then they try to get the best internships, and then the best jobs. It's not exactly conducive to starting a family. You'll lose a step in the rat race, and then your kid will need to join this rat race.
Like, here in Europe we've got right-wing parties on the rise that have this conspiracy theory that the foreigners are moving here en masse to replace the locals (because of ??? they never explained, our jobs, benefits and women I suppose). So they spend a lot of time and effort fearmongering about the for'ners coming here and bring in laws and policies to keep them out.
Meanwhile they don't seem to be doing anything about those that already live here - you'd think these right-wing, own-people-first types would do anything to ensure people living here would thrive and reproduce. But no free child care, no major economic reform to allow single incomes to buy a house, none of that. Because ultimately it's not about foreigners or "own people first", it's about self-enrichment, got mine fuck you.
That’s an irrational reaction, probably conditioned by ideology.
A well-run state has been perhaps one of the most successful enabling factors for human flourishing in human history.
And yours isn't?
Like it doesn't take much beyond a room temperature IQ to look at the arc of just about every government these days and make an estimation of where it's going without some substantial unforeseen change of course.
>A well-run state has been perhaps one of the most successful enabling factors for human flourishing in human history.
Historically the states that have dabbled in this area of policy area has been "well run" in only the most dishonest "they accomplished their short term goals" sense of the phrase.
careful, we have a very intelligent individual over here
> arc of just about every government
do you mean the US government?
If you want to take it as a well deserved slight in your direction that's fine but the point was the opposite. Just about anyone can make the insight I did. You don't have to be a genius to see what's going on here.
>do you mean the US government?
It's one of many dozens on the list.
Many people trust the government for policing, military, central banking. Some not. Many trust them for health care and education, many not.
Very very few don’t trust the government for anything. So for this random example, a dating service, it feels like it’s ideological conditioning (otherwise the OP would explain why it feels bad for them).
Not if you think that your government isn't looking out for your best interests. A well run state is exactly what we need, but rarely what we have. Instead we see rising authoritarianism, less transparency, open bribery, more frequent and blatant lying, less accountability, more corruption, democratic backsliding, attacks on civil rights. etc. All that stuff is going to breed skepticism, and it should.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Still, there's value in this product in a non-radicalized society.
Let's see what other, more "progressive" governments will think about that. Lots of possibilities in government-run partner matching for out future AI overlords.
Oh yeah, the government workers, a group of people known for their prolific dating and people skills. This will go so well.
"Any hard Nos for you?", well, those who ignored the calls to their number is a no brainer big No, and also those who don't know how to fill their SMFF-29f-A form, which is different from SMFF-29F-A. Everyone here hates people who don't know the difference between SMFF-29f-A and SMFF-29F-A.
Modern dating problem comes from too much online platforms trying to sell you a lifestyle and tell you what you should have. People do not need another online platform to solve the problem caused by online platforms
How many people see their ideal match and get humbled (or emboldened) by surprising results?
Since the match pool will never be exactly 1:1, do you do anything at all about the least matchable people?
Would it become possible to gauge whether changed answers are efforts to widen one's net or legitimate personal growth and/or a bit of self-reflection?
If the dating service detects deceptive answering, is it correct to just pair these people with other dishonest users?
Can you gather any feedback from unsuccessful dates and apply a "Je n'sais quoi" factor when calculating their compatibility with future matches?
Are there detectable signals of someone's "Je n'sais quoi" factor in their profile metadata? (e.g. People answering the full survey in less than 15 minutes at 3 a.m. are 28% less desireable on average)
While it's good to grow together with a partner, how would such an algorithm be able to determine that an ambitious person will not be paired with a long-term apathetic? (I do realize they have the, "always working on yourself?" question. Still... people change.)
Is this a ploy to get more applicants to join the government staff, if the pilot remains closed to the public?
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One thing I particularly liked about early OKCupid was the ability to rank how much someone's answer mattered. For instance, I don't particularly mind someone's exercise and organization preferences, and it's fine if we didn't match because they DO have expectations from me in these areas which I fail to meet. I would hope they implement this as well, although a description of the site in The Straits Times suggests this nuance isn't there.
One other thing the Singapore dating service has in common with OKCupid is at least a few poorly worded questions: "What’s a country that’s ruined all other countries for you?" is akin to OKC's "In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?" You can't split hairs, "tons of negative excitement, a sudden spike in anxiety/dread, instantaneous long-term shift in priorities, etc.; although the use of atomic weapons thoroughly horrifies me," as a Yes/No response, just like you can't explain whether the country that ruined others did so via greatness (Spain with its paella, beaches, and music) or loss of faith in humanity (Ireland after a stolen laptop and being verbally threatened by an elementary-aged child while I was walking with a baby stroller).
If (say) both would-be parents in a couple have to work long hours to afford their own food, housing, & such - yeah, NO. They obviously can't have many kids.
Anyone here familiar, to comment?
Singapore is so rich and desirable that it can import highly educated people forever. Plus, it is diverse by default/design, so people are quite open to having diverse neighbors.
And are those domestic workers part of the population pool that you're trying to boost the fertility of?