The world is full of women offering sex-on-demand. At very reasonable rates.
Edit: The great Michel Houellebecq's Platform, a novel of a travel company that revolutionizes the industry by promoting sex tourism, is a recommended read.
This was downvoted and yet seems to me a perceptive comment. Unless Pure drastically limits the quantity / quality of men, they aren't going to succeed because overwhelming male response will drive out women.
The developers behind Pure presumably aren't stupid, of course, and know much more about how to solve this problem than I do. The problem most women have is not sex, but finding someone they actually want to have sex with and (who also wants to have sex with them). That's where filtering becomes important.
Oddly LTR dating sites do quite fine despite the fact that the better they are the sooner their users leave.
Men looking for sex drive away women looking for LTRs, that's about it. Women looking for sex having a huge selection just means having their needs met sooner.
You're right in that if you're running a dating site for LTRs NSA men drive away women, but NSA men don't drive away NSA women.
I think the "most women" mindset is where things start to go wrong with analyses of sex. I think that there are enough people out there (men and women both) that "large enough" subsets exist to make things like this work.
My personal hypotheses are: 1) the subset of women who want to have casual encounters regularly is small; 2) the subset who want to have casual encounters sometimes is very large; 3) if you can reduce friction and stigma significantly then you can activate a modest size subset of women who want a casual encounter now.
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When I lived in NYC, I found happy casual consensual sex through Nerve / CL / OkCupid on the same day I looked about 50% of the time I was interested (between 5-10 successes and some awkwardness but no failures).
You should publish a how-to guide for women. Really. Some best practices to avoid potential stalkers and maintain anonymity. These two issues are my main reasons for not participating in the online dating environment.
I'm afraid of traveling to somebody's place due to potential hidden cams; thank you very much Mr. Tucker Max. I'm afraid of hosting, because if the guy is a creep, now he's a creep with my address, and with a little digging around, my name, which probably leads to my work. Hotels that I would decide to go to ad-hoc are the best option, but as of now I can't spare hundreds of dollars per encounter. Besides do hotels allow registering with a pseudonym?
So as a woman who might be open to the idea, but has the above concerns, there really is no option for me other than a relationship (as in, vetting the guy myself before any fun) and social contacts (people who've been vetted by my friends).
Danno likely meant "cornpone," a word that connotes 'rural Southern' when used of opinions.
The rural South is not usually associated with the idea that people want sex to have meaning, and that this is often transient when we find it, so DannoHung's ruminations on the subject must remain mysterious to us.
Your statements are philosophical pablum. They have nothing convincing about them. I thought it might be a quote from something, but if it is, I can't find it.
I'm sorry that I used a colloquialism and muddied my meaning. I thought it was a funny turn of phrase.
Whether or not you are convinced is your business. It took me years of hard living to learn from my mistakes. If you can learn the same lessons some easier way, or if you need to take a harder route, it's all one to me.
There have been other apps that try to mimic Grindr (and Scruff, Jack'd, Growlr, ...) for the non-gay/bi crowd, and this won't be the last one. The question with any dating app/website/service (at least in our cultures currently) is, "How will you attract and keep women engaged with the service?" Fortunately for Grindr, that's not a problem.
That said, there is still plenty of room for innovation even with many competitors to Grindr. Grindr seems more and more overrun with spam, bots, and fake profiles. Hopefully they (or competitors) can create ways to deal with these beyond just "reporting" them.
That's true in general, but, as I wrote here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6214504 , the founders presumably know that—and know that plenty of women are looking for sex with the right guy. The interesting question to me is how Pure will solve that problem.
The real question is how does one define "the right guy", and are the requirements to define it for the average women something that can be satisfied within a 24 hour time constraint?
Easy: limit the supply of men but not women (e.g. let almost all women register, but only let the top x% of the men register). There's pretty much no gender-neutral solution (which is "ironic" since the service is supported by a feminist).
EDIT: The app appears to allow requests only if two profiles have been mutually selected as attractive, which would indicate that men need to spam those attractive buttons quite a lot..
I think that for short-term encounters "rich" is a proxy for sanity. It means they have jobs that bring in good money; which means they need to be integrated to the society to some degree and wouldn't have too much time to be focused on stalking someone. It also means that they have something important to lose and have an active interest in not freaking a woman out.
"educated" could be a substitute for "rich" - and the educated, good looking, but not very rich people would be ideal for dating sites.
It'll back onto "shallow" factors anyways. Even on "traditional" dating sites the vast, vast, vast majority of messaging occurs based almost entirely on looks.
Websites that market themselves as soulmate-finding services haven't solved this, I highly doubt a hookup site is going to do it.
How would limiting the the supply of men increase the chance of women finding the "right" one?
I also don't understand how a non-gender-neutral solution is ironic. I can hardly think of any solution to a gender problem that is "neutral". You don't fix gender imbalance with gender neutral methods.
Actually forbidding men to spam copy and paste messages to every woman could elevate the experience for women.
There's a site that is trying this (not letting men message women until the woman gives permission). I tried it out but there were only about 20 female profiles in my area (a large coastal metro) and most of them were inactive. The ones who were active were unattractive and their profiles were all of the "I'm an easy-going girl who loves to laugh" variety. I'm not sure if that's a result of the approach or just a marketing problem on the part of that site in particular.
All of these services all seem to promote some sexy girl on their home page or ads, or whatever - so of course men will rush to it in droves.
If they don't want to fall in the same trap, how about promoting it as a service for both genders, but with a man in the ad, or at the very least a couple.
This service promotes itself as a service for both genders.
The ad features a heterosexual couple hooking up with another woman. Both of the women appear rather normal, neither magazine-style 'sexy' (no fake breasts, no size 0, no crazy makeup), but both are certainly sensual. It even sensualizes the man.
this isn't true. it's 2013. women are having lots of sex, and they're on the internet. deal with it.
it's just that all the women are banging the same 10-20% of guys. the rest of the guys are not getting laid, except on rare occasion, or inside of relationships.
woman here. this rings true. i have a female friend who did online dating, with the specific purpose of finding short term encounters. i would say she is an 8 on every guy's scale, a 10 on most. she went after very physically fit and intelligent guys, messaged them, never got a reply back.
I'm not buying that a female "9" (on average apparently) went to a popular dating site, messaged a bunch of guys (even 9s themselves) and received no response. There's something else at play here that you aren't telling us or don't know. There are lots of possible reasons no one messaged her back:
1) She messaged only a few people (small sample size)
2) She messaged only people with older, inactive profiles
> it's just that all the women are banging the same 10-20% of guys.
I don't think this is entirely true because most of the 10-20% men also have standards. They will not have sex with a lot of the less attractive women and those women are therefore not in the market for casual sex in any meaningful way (just like everyone who would like to own a Ferrari is not in the "market" for a Ferrari - pardon the dubious analogy).
Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, what you claim would still only be true within the subset of women looking for casual sex which I am sure is smaller then the subset of men looking for casual sex. You don't see many "pickup artist" books on getting laid with the 10% men.
Everything you say makes sense, but here's the twist in my experience: women who can't get a Ferrari, don't get the next best car. The alternative to a top 10% man is a vibrator.
That's not really how the "hook up" site scene works.
It's a lot like swinger parties. 8's are with 8's, and 3's are with 3's.
It's nigh impossible to make a 9 connect with a 3. And this goes both ways. The data testify to this on site after site. So it will be interesting to see if Pure can solve that problem.
Put another way... the top .. say... 10% of men will DEFINITELY not be trying to connect with the bottom 50% of women. Or vice versa. It just hasn't worked that way for any other site. If a "hook up" site could solve that problem... they could make a MINT.
There is a LOT of money in convincing the top 10% of guys to have relations with the bottom 50% of women. As mercenary as that sounds. It's just that no one has figured that out.
The site 500's unless you leave off the /en/ from the URL. (It's posted in the article as http://getpure/en/ though.) Someone misconfigured something. I commented about this, but then someone else downvoted me.
This does not solve the issue that men and women, in most cases, have fundamentally different mind sets in regards to sexuality. It assumes, incorrectly, that anonymous sex is something that appeals to a large majority of women. I am going to go out on a limb here and say the inverse is true.
>>It assumes, incorrectly, that anonymous sex is something that appeals to a large majority of women.
I don't have any citations handy, but in several gender studies classes back in college, I learned about research that has shown that most women actually have fantasies about hooking up with complete strangers. Where it gets complicated is that these fantasies almost never reflect actual desire, but rather serve as a way to enable certain feelings in the woman: excited, wanted, dominated, etc. This is why romance novels almost never describe the physical traits of the male character and focus overwhelmingly on how he acts and how he makes the female protagonist feel. It's also why men can almost never relate to such novels even when they read them.
It also assumes that anonymous sex is something that appeals to a large majority of men. I'm not entirely certain that this actually holds up to evidence either. Does anyone know of any research that studies this? I vaguely remember reading an article about this at one point.
You're so incredibly wrong here. From my life experience, you can be one of the following: 1. a smart guy who has slept with less than 5 girls and never had a non-sexual friend who's a girl, or 2. An ignorant, average intelligent guy who's slept with a lot of girls but as in 1, never been friends with a girl. I see upon writing this that the common denominator in these is the lack if a girl _friend_. Because if you had one, who would talk open heartedly with you, and without the boy/girl politeness mask on, you'd see that they share a lot more than you think. They occasionally fantasize about a stranger who can give them a quick and dirty lay as well. Although not if said stranger had no idea what is happening and is gonna tell his buddies the next day about the slut he fucked over. But rather that he met this awesome person who had an great sense of humor, taste in movies, and knew how to give awesome blow jobs. That's the kind of girls that our world, being more and more rid of caveman sexism, is fostering. I excuse myself in advance fornthe possibility that I'm putting too many words in other peoples mouths, but your attitude just makes me depressed and angry.
I'm a bit skeptic, what are the chances that it hooks you up with a transvestite? And besides, is it even legal?
Also this:
"We believe it’s natural for someone to feel a powerful sense of attachment to a long term partner, while experiencing romantic love for somebody else and at the same time, feeling sexually attracted to a diverse range of people."
Sounds like these guys are encouraging cheating on your spouse. There's no way this can pass the App Store's strict policy.
Just read what I pasted, there's no other logical way to interpret it. Having a long-term partner and a sex-hookup on the side, what is that if not cheating? If they can't even get their PR blurb right I wonder how they're gonna manage the media shitstorm that's probably coming their way.
>Having a long-term partner and a sex-hookup on the side, what is that if not cheating?
Cheating means "doing something which is not agreed upon". If both partners in a relationship agree to have a possibility of a 'sex-hookup', it's by definition not cheating.
I think you need to open your eyes to the diverse shapes and forms that human relationships can take. While what they are suggesting may seem to be categorically "cheating" to you, it is not to many others.
I doubt a bunch of puritan talking heads on CNN complaining about this company will do anything but drive popularity among people who are not as disturbed by it as you. "Weathering that storm" should require nothing more than a "If you don't like it, don't use it" attitude. People who like it will use it anyway; they don't need to court the approval of the staunchly traditional.
People who like it will use it anyway; they don't need to court the approval of the staunchly traditional.
I think OP is talking about it not being accepted into the App Store w/ the language used. So if OP is right, people who like it and have an iDevice won't use it because they won't have access to it.
You're (your mentality is) one of the problems they are going against. Why would you call it cheating if both partners knew about it and agreed to it? You think it's impossible, or just "bad" in some sense?
Many people here say things that are purely their belief about how the relationship they are in should function. It's ok, it just means that your not a target of this service. The problem starts when you stigmatize people who are and who would use it. You can't say that people are cheating on each other if all interested parties consent - but you did it anyway.
First of all, I'm not disturbed by the app, I could care less what people (married or otherwise) do in their time. What I'm pointing out here is a failure in conveying the purpose of this whole venture, you don't cater to people who are searching for quick hookups talking about long-term relationships. If they decided to put that in there I surely hope there's a reason beyond just throwing words at a website without thinking and I highly doubt it was to cater to the very narrow niche of open couples. Also if you think you can just shrug off media's accusation of moral corruption and whatnot with a smartass attitude you're very naive and you fail to account to a whole series of fiascos that have sunk many a business before.
I think the problem here is that people are so eager to jump at someone’s throat that stop short of reading a whole comment. As I said I doubt they would cater to a niche so cramped as that of open couples, that would be suicidal business-wise. Maybe you’re all caught up with Californication or whatever it is that gets pushed on cable TV these days, that you fail to distinguish reality from fiction.
> "What I'm pointing out here is a failure in conveying the purpose of this whole venture, you don't cater to people who are searching for quick hookups talking about long-term relationships"
Sure you do. Particularly if you think that people in long-term relationships who are interested in quick hookups are an under-served market. Maybe you don't think that market is under-served, but frankly it doesn't matter much if you approve of them since you are clearly not in their target audience.
Topical bingo seems like a weird thing to target but hey, am I going to tell patio11 that he's wrong? Of course not.
> "Also if you think you can just shrug off media's accusation of moral corruption and whatnot with a smartass attitude you're very naive and you fail to account to a whole series of fiascos that have sunk many a business before."
There are plenty of people who hate Grindr, and they do just fine. Hell, an even better example: Porn. There are countless people who disapprove loudly. It doesn't matter though, that industry does great. Sure, some countries ban porn, but do you really think that there is any danger that first-world countries will ban a service that facilitates consenting adults having sex?
What is the worse case scenario here? CNN and my mother despise this company, while people like myself use it anyway? Broad societal approval is unnecessary in a free society.
It's copy designed to attract a certain demographic. They want to get away from the idea that it's a bunch of men who can't get laid looking for hookups on the internet, and instead create the idea that it's a bunch of men in loving committed relationships looking for a bit of fun on the side with the full consent of their partners.
Media accusations of moral corruption couldn't be better for a business like that as it will make the demographic they are seeking aware of the site.
About 50% of the populace has had more than one partner at a time, it's not a narrow demo.
> "Media accusations of moral corruption couldn't be better for a business like that as it will make the demographic they are seeking aware of the site."
In fact, I dare say that this company will likely be disappointed if they don't get the media huffy.
I don't know where you get those statistics but I'm really skeptic about their veracity. Be that as it may, what I was pointing out is that (to me at least) it appears they're promoting cheating as an uplifting a liberating deed (and I don't see how that would help anyone, them in particular, see the old media shitstorm). If their not, then it's just a deficiency in clearly stating their mission, since I don't think I'll be the only one interpreting it that way.
Remeber when there were people opposing SOPA and newspapers (yes, old media) going batshit over the matter? I bet do you also remember how well GoDaddy managed the situation, I bet you remember how they said that their business wouldn't be affected by those few disgruntled users. I know that I remember how quickly they were to retract their support when people started actually migrating from their service. And we're talking of an old, well-established and profitable business. Imagine what bad PR would do to a budding startup.
GoDaddy had their customers pissed at them. Why would Pure be worried about a bunch of people plainly not in their target audience being mad at them? They wouldn't be worried, if they are smart. That'd be like Smirnoff being worried what Mormons think of them.
The customers were informed of the matter by the media and fueled by the media in days after. If the NYT or whatever newspaper does a story on these guys and points out their badly worded PR blurb alleging that they maybe have a vested interest in ruining marriages (again, this might be not the case, but it's what I get from the quote above) suddenly everyone and their mother will be "not in their target audience" because everyone would stear clear of them for the bad rep.
So what is going to happen here. What is the hypothesizes sequence of events? CNN informs me that people are using this companies service to have sex with strangers, I, after finishing having sex with a stranger, become socked and outraged, call them up, and tell them that I will no longer be using their service? I'm going to no longer use this service because my mother disapproves? Seems plausible, that is exactly why I never look at pictures of naked people either!
Yeah, that would be a real problem for them. They better be careful that they don't offend old people.
What would happen is that people read the whole long-term partner thing, assume it's favoring cheating and Pure would become "that app that ruins marriages" and a whole slew of people who'd rather not being associated with the whole "ruined marriages" thing would stop using/avoid it.
Do you think that you get their logo tattooed on your forehead when you use it or something? Pornography gets the same rap from the same people; no grave problems for their industry there...
Why would I possibly care that CNN thinks it is a homewrecker? Why would I care if my boss thinks that? Hell, why would I care if my own mother thinks that? I'd use it anyway.
I'm not spreading gospel here and everyone is entitled to his own opinion, I'm just saying it happen before it can happen again. Now, as much as I enjoy being ridiculed on the internet, I'm going to sleep, night.
It's not. You can't judge these services as you would in the real world, these are online/app services, think about chat-roulette: you can't use the thing without seeing someone whipping his penis in front of you. These kind of services tend to have an 80% of male populace and generally speaking, gender aside, a whole lot of leeway for abuse, not least of which is lying about your sexual preferences, and before you know it the service is polluted with false profiles and girls that are actually men.
Frankly I would fear if it hooked me up with anyone other than a girl, transvestite or less, and I'm positive that would happen sooner rather than later. With these kind of services it's just bound to happen.
The people in their target audience are obviously not crippled by such a paranoia.
Do you know what happens when I am set up with somebody that I discover I am not interested in (be it by algorithm or a misguided friend, it makes no difference)? I politely let the person know that I am not interested, we finish our meal and then go separate ways. Like adults.
Answering to sibling comment: why would you be afraid? Is a polite chat and not doing anything with person you don't find attractive not an option with this app? Once you're hooked, do you absolutely have to fsck? I don't think so.
You really sound like you are afraid of just being in one room with the "tranny". You're probably not, but I read your comments as implying that, just FYI.
Yeah, you may as well be afraid that your friend will suggest you go out with somebody that you don't find attractive, or somebody who bores you, or somebody that is bored by you. What's the big deal?
The reply button takes an eternity to appear and it's getting messy, so I'll just respond here.
What you're all missing guys is that if that app hooks you with a man (and in my mind is more of a question of when and not if) it would be way more than an inconvenience. Yes you would politely refuse and move on, but at that point you would've also wasted precious hours of your time. Maybe you drove for miles in traffic only to find that you've been hooked up with a dude, that' my fear.
...and then you proceed to describe an inconvenience...
How is it hooking you up with a man that you are not attracted to any more problematic than it hooking you up with a woman that you are not attracted to? What if I drive miles in traffic only to be hooked up with somebody with long hair!? I prefer short hair, their profile picture was terribly misleading, the horror!
You should seriously consider the possibility that you have some prejudices that are compromising your ability to reason here.
When you're hooking up with a girl you know you're just giving it a shot and if you don't hit it off you just drive home. If I drive for 7 miles only to find a dude instead of a girl, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't try and hook up with him but get the hell home, and I would be very disappointed in the misleading service.
> When you're hooking up with a girl you know you're just giving it a shot and if you don't hit it off you just drive home.
Certainly not. If I am not attracted to the woman I am not going to waste her and my time. I'm not going to try to have sex with her anyway, why would I? If I get hooked up with a woman that I don't find attractive then it is just as much a waste of my time as if it was a man.
Obviously you've never so much as dipped your pinkie toe in the internet dating scene (or been set up on blind dates in general). Ever hear of the "myspace angle"? What you are describing happens with women too. It is not a big deal.
Yeah, no kidding. You are pretty damn far out of their target audience. If that sort of thing is a big deal to you, then frankly it is best for everyone else that you don't use those kind of services.
It's not the misleading service; it's the misleading person who misled you, in particular, that you should be disappointed in.
I wouldn't display too much animus about this. It makes you look, well, homophobic. And also like you don't have enough good sense to pre-vent people to make sure they are the gender you are seeking before meeting them, if you are so very concerned that someone might be (gasp, horrors) misleading you online.
The NOAD reports it under "informal", had it been a slur it would've been under "vulgar". I actually check the dictionary before posting any given comment.
Its status as a slur is not determined by the dictionary definition. It's a slur because transgendered people (the target of the term) consider it to be so.
There are many terms that minorities consider offensive, in the meantime I'll stick to the dictionary. When transvestites will be authorities in language matters I'll change accordingly.
Since it seems to be that much of an issue for you guys, I edited to comment. That said, I don't see me switching from a celebrated English dictionary to the laughable Wikipedia anytime soon.
The laughable dictionary is, at least in this case, more accurate than your celebrated one.
Weird, that. I hope you are not forgetting that English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. You are going to continue having trouble using them if you make that mistake.
Dictionaries are more descriptive than prescriptive. That is, they describe words and how they are used; they do not determine what words are and how they are used. Given that dictionaries are also conservative by nature - slow to change - it is unwise to appeal to a dictionary to determine how people will feel when they hear a word.
Short of asking any person how they feel about a given word I'll stick to the dictionary and people will have to adapt at my "slow to change" use of the language.
We're telling you how this particular set of people are likely to react. It's fair if you did not know, and referred to the best source you could find (the dictionary). But now you have more data, and can adapt now.
A natural response is that you can't do this for all words with all people. But you don't need to do that. Once you learn how people respond to a word, you can change. It's how we learned what to say and what not to say in different contexts - surely you didn't check the dictionary every time someone told you "That's not appropriate here."
The pill changed the rational cost/benefit equation for casual sex for women. Now what we need is another pill that changes women's feelings about it, but one that is marketed as something other than a promiscuity pill.
EDIT: The link currently returns Server Error (500):
Our target audience is sexually active people with smartphones/tablets, who are using dating services, watching porn, buying pleasure products and escort services.
What could be more appealing than the prospect of hooking up with a random stranger who's active on half a dozen dating services, frequents porn sites, has a closet full of sex toys and, when all else fails, doesn't mind paying for a little affection? Sounds like the man/woman every attractive, sane person is looking for a quick romp with!
The $9.99 to request sex is an interesting way to fix the supply and demand problem of women and men. For $9.99, you can request sex from as many females as possible, without any guarantee that any of them will say yes. This will inevitably lead to a lot of unsatisfied buyers.
Tinder is one competitor. It uses much less explicitly sexual words/pics in their promotional stuff. That seems to be something that would be more agreeable to women (stereotypically).
But I've heard it described as Grindr for straight people. Seems it's known as a straight-up hookup app.
- Where's the Y Axis on that graph? It could be 10 or 1,000 downloads and I wouldn't know the difference.
- #9 fastest growing based on what index? It'd be impressive to say it's #9 in the App Store under the dating category, but there's only one mention of it being #9 fastest growing. It doesn't elaborate futher.
- If you're going to pilot launch this, don't do it in San Francisco. There's a reason why Tinder was launched in LA and Grouper in NYC. Girls in SF will not use this; I talk to a lot of them because I run a dating startup and they're already very hesitant about meeting complete strangers for drinks. If anything, launch this thing in Las Vegas and be the Uber for prostitution.
- There's nothing here that stands out as compelling as a way to overcome the chicken and egg problem. A wait list is not going to solve that problem for you.
Judging by the video and the deck I'd say that they're approaching a problem that can't be solved by an app. Because it's not about finding someone to get laid - this problem has already several solutions which are working since few thousands years.
They're going to have trouble with the name. Pure ( http://www.pure.com/ ) is a radio company - which means they're in the business of moving bits around and may want to have a smartphone app for streaming at some stage.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadEdit: The great Michel Houellebecq's Platform, a novel of a travel company that revolutionizes the industry by promoting sex tourism, is a recommended read.
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fic...
Sex is the great eradicator of meaning. And we all want our sex to mean something. Hence the difficulty of being a human being.
The developers behind Pure presumably aren't stupid, of course, and know much more about how to solve this problem than I do. The problem most women have is not sex, but finding someone they actually want to have sex with and (who also wants to have sex with them). That's where filtering becomes important.
Men looking for sex drive away women looking for LTRs, that's about it. Women looking for sex having a huge selection just means having their needs met sooner.
You're right in that if you're running a dating site for LTRs NSA men drive away women, but NSA men don't drive away NSA women.
My personal hypotheses are: 1) the subset of women who want to have casual encounters regularly is small; 2) the subset who want to have casual encounters sometimes is very large; 3) if you can reduce friction and stigma significantly then you can activate a modest size subset of women who want a casual encounter now.
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When I lived in NYC, I found happy casual consensual sex through Nerve / CL / OkCupid on the same day I looked about 50% of the time I was interested (between 5-10 successes and some awkwardness but no failures).
I'm afraid of traveling to somebody's place due to potential hidden cams; thank you very much Mr. Tucker Max. I'm afraid of hosting, because if the guy is a creep, now he's a creep with my address, and with a little digging around, my name, which probably leads to my work. Hotels that I would decide to go to ad-hoc are the best option, but as of now I can't spare hundreds of dollars per encounter. Besides do hotels allow registering with a pseudonym?
So as a woman who might be open to the idea, but has the above concerns, there really is no option for me other than a relationship (as in, vetting the guy myself before any fun) and social contacts (people who've been vetted by my friends).
This sounds like some real corn-fed bullshit.
The rural South is not usually associated with the idea that people want sex to have meaning, and that this is often transient when we find it, so DannoHung's ruminations on the subject must remain mysterious to us.
I'm sorry that I used a colloquialism and muddied my meaning. I thought it was a funny turn of phrase.
I've really got to find a new place to keep up with tech news.
(With some nifty features, granted)
That said, there is still plenty of room for innovation even with many competitors to Grindr. Grindr seems more and more overrun with spam, bots, and fake profiles. Hopefully they (or competitors) can create ways to deal with these beyond just "reporting" them.
EDIT: The app appears to allow requests only if two profiles have been mutually selected as attractive, which would indicate that men need to spam those attractive buttons quite a lot..
Tom Brady's mistress, or mistresses, are likely to look a lot better than any of the women on Pure.
There is even a joke about it I hear a lot when speaking to online dating startup guys...
"...What do statistics tell us about the rich, good looking guys on an online dating service?
That they are liars..."
And yet, online dating sites do okay, don't they?
"educated" could be a substitute for "rich" - and the educated, good looking, but not very rich people would be ideal for dating sites.
Websites that market themselves as soulmate-finding services haven't solved this, I highly doubt a hookup site is going to do it.
I also don't understand how a non-gender-neutral solution is ironic. I can hardly think of any solution to a gender problem that is "neutral". You don't fix gender imbalance with gender neutral methods.
Actually forbidding men to spam copy and paste messages to every woman could elevate the experience for women.
Maybe by using something like OKCupid data to extrapolate what an attractive man is in general in the context of online hookups/dating.
If they don't want to fall in the same trap, how about promoting it as a service for both genders, but with a man in the ad, or at the very least a couple.
Actually the latest marketing tactic seems to be the extremely classy "Fuck ugly women in your area".
The ad features a heterosexual couple hooking up with another woman. Both of the women appear rather normal, neither magazine-style 'sexy' (no fake breasts, no size 0, no crazy makeup), but both are certainly sensual. It even sensualizes the man.
I'd say their ad is rather spot-on.
it's just that all the women are banging the same 10-20% of guys. the rest of the guys are not getting laid, except on rare occasion, or inside of relationships.
sex is a pareto distributed market.
long-term relationships / marriage are not.
What were her results?
1) She messaged only a few people (small sample size)
2) She messaged only people with older, inactive profiles
3) Her information lacked a picture
4) Her profile lacked key information
5) Her picture(s) were bad
etc
6) All of the profiles for guys who are 9s that she messaged on those dating sites were fake. If a guy is a 9 or a 10, he rarely needs a dating site.
Can we leave those memes on Reddit please?
> it's just that all the women are banging the same 10-20% of guys.
I don't think this is entirely true because most of the 10-20% men also have standards. They will not have sex with a lot of the less attractive women and those women are therefore not in the market for casual sex in any meaningful way (just like everyone who would like to own a Ferrari is not in the "market" for a Ferrari - pardon the dubious analogy).
Furthermore, as someone else pointed out, what you claim would still only be true within the subset of women looking for casual sex which I am sure is smaller then the subset of men looking for casual sex. You don't see many "pickup artist" books on getting laid with the 10% men.
That's not really how the "hook up" site scene works.
It's a lot like swinger parties. 8's are with 8's, and 3's are with 3's.
It's nigh impossible to make a 9 connect with a 3. And this goes both ways. The data testify to this on site after site. So it will be interesting to see if Pure can solve that problem.
Put another way... the top .. say... 10% of men will DEFINITELY not be trying to connect with the bottom 50% of women. Or vice versa. It just hasn't worked that way for any other site. If a "hook up" site could solve that problem... they could make a MINT.
There is a LOT of money in convincing the top 10% of guys to have relations with the bottom 50% of women. As mercenary as that sounds. It's just that no one has figured that out.
In any event, this app won't get past the severely disparate interest in casual sex between the sexes.
Unless men just accept that women interested in casual sex might have FAR more conquests than they do. Good luck with that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6214711
I don't have any citations handy, but in several gender studies classes back in college, I learned about research that has shown that most women actually have fantasies about hooking up with complete strangers. Where it gets complicated is that these fantasies almost never reflect actual desire, but rather serve as a way to enable certain feelings in the woman: excited, wanted, dominated, etc. This is why romance novels almost never describe the physical traits of the male character and focus overwhelmingly on how he acts and how he makes the female protagonist feel. It's also why men can almost never relate to such novels even when they read them.
Also this:
"We believe it’s natural for someone to feel a powerful sense of attachment to a long term partner, while experiencing romantic love for somebody else and at the same time, feeling sexually attracted to a diverse range of people."
Sounds like these guys are encouraging cheating on your spouse. There's no way this can pass the App Store's strict policy.
Cheating means "doing something which is not agreed upon". If both partners in a relationship agree to have a possibility of a 'sex-hookup', it's by definition not cheating.
I doubt a bunch of puritan talking heads on CNN complaining about this company will do anything but drive popularity among people who are not as disturbed by it as you. "Weathering that storm" should require nothing more than a "If you don't like it, don't use it" attitude. People who like it will use it anyway; they don't need to court the approval of the staunchly traditional.
I think OP is talking about it not being accepted into the App Store w/ the language used. So if OP is right, people who like it and have an iDevice won't use it because they won't have access to it.
Many people here say things that are purely their belief about how the relationship they are in should function. It's ok, it just means that your not a target of this service. The problem starts when you stigmatize people who are and who would use it. You can't say that people are cheating on each other if all interested parties consent - but you did it anyway.
Yes, you can. But it's a niche, of people who are in open relationships.
Whether it happens enough to sustain a business strategy is another question, and not one that you or I really need to worry about.
> "What I'm pointing out here is a failure in conveying the purpose of this whole venture, you don't cater to people who are searching for quick hookups talking about long-term relationships"
Sure you do. Particularly if you think that people in long-term relationships who are interested in quick hookups are an under-served market. Maybe you don't think that market is under-served, but frankly it doesn't matter much if you approve of them since you are clearly not in their target audience.
Topical bingo seems like a weird thing to target but hey, am I going to tell patio11 that he's wrong? Of course not.
> "Also if you think you can just shrug off media's accusation of moral corruption and whatnot with a smartass attitude you're very naive and you fail to account to a whole series of fiascos that have sunk many a business before."
There are plenty of people who hate Grindr, and they do just fine. Hell, an even better example: Porn. There are countless people who disapprove loudly. It doesn't matter though, that industry does great. Sure, some countries ban porn, but do you really think that there is any danger that first-world countries will ban a service that facilitates consenting adults having sex?
What is the worse case scenario here? CNN and my mother despise this company, while people like myself use it anyway? Broad societal approval is unnecessary in a free society.
Media accusations of moral corruption couldn't be better for a business like that as it will make the demographic they are seeking aware of the site.
About 50% of the populace has had more than one partner at a time, it's not a narrow demo.
In fact, I dare say that this company will likely be disappointed if they don't get the media huffy.
Yeah, that would be a real problem for them. They better be careful that they don't offend old people.
Why would I possibly care that CNN thinks it is a homewrecker? Why would I care if my boss thinks that? Hell, why would I care if my own mother thinks that? I'd use it anyway.
Do you know what happens when I am set up with somebody that I discover I am not interested in (be it by algorithm or a misguided friend, it makes no difference)? I politely let the person know that I am not interested, we finish our meal and then go separate ways. Like adults.
You really sound like you are afraid of just being in one room with the "tranny". You're probably not, but I read your comments as implying that, just FYI.
What you're all missing guys is that if that app hooks you with a man (and in my mind is more of a question of when and not if) it would be way more than an inconvenience. Yes you would politely refuse and move on, but at that point you would've also wasted precious hours of your time. Maybe you drove for miles in traffic only to find that you've been hooked up with a dude, that' my fear.
...and then you proceed to describe an inconvenience...
How is it hooking you up with a man that you are not attracted to any more problematic than it hooking you up with a woman that you are not attracted to? What if I drive miles in traffic only to be hooked up with somebody with long hair!? I prefer short hair, their profile picture was terribly misleading, the horror!
You should seriously consider the possibility that you have some prejudices that are compromising your ability to reason here.
Certainly not. If I am not attracted to the woman I am not going to waste her and my time. I'm not going to try to have sex with her anyway, why would I? If I get hooked up with a woman that I don't find attractive then it is just as much a waste of my time as if it was a man.
It's not. For people who aren't me, that is.
I wouldn't display too much animus about this. It makes you look, well, homophobic. And also like you don't have enough good sense to pre-vent people to make sure they are the gender you are seeking before meeting them, if you are so very concerned that someone might be (gasp, horrors) misleading you online.
Citation needed. Is this backed up by personal experience, someone else's data, or is it just something that you spend a lot of time thinking about?
The word is a slur, and is considered such by many more than just the people it refers to. Though I suppose nobody can make you care.
Weird, that. I hope you are not forgetting that English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. You are going to continue having trouble using them if you make that mistake.
A natural response is that you can't do this for all words with all people. But you don't need to do that. Once you learn how people respond to a word, you can change. It's how we learned what to say and what not to say in different contexts - surely you didn't check the dictionary every time someone told you "That's not appropriate here."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMlHZNMH5KA
Interestingly, to request sex you need to buy a 24h pass for e.g. $9.99.
Apparently you need to first select attractive profiles before they can send you a sex request.
1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hd3f814nsxflnbl/Pure-Invest-ENG.pd...
EDIT: The link currently returns Server Error (500):
http://getpure.org/en/
However, if you put in http://getpure.org and let the server redirect you to http://getpure.org/en/, it works. Someone must have misconfigured something.
A lot of bad experiences on there (at least for straight people) and, after all, this is what Pure is trying to do ("a better casual encounters").
I would think that safety would be a significant concern in using a service like this.
ALERT: Virgin Detected
But I've heard it described as Grindr for straight people. Seems it's known as a straight-up hookup app.
[une] http://www.gotinder.com/
[deux] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5294253
[trois] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/jackrivlin/100009761...
- Where's the Y Axis on that graph? It could be 10 or 1,000 downloads and I wouldn't know the difference.
- #9 fastest growing based on what index? It'd be impressive to say it's #9 in the App Store under the dating category, but there's only one mention of it being #9 fastest growing. It doesn't elaborate futher.
- If you're going to pilot launch this, don't do it in San Francisco. There's a reason why Tinder was launched in LA and Grouper in NYC. Girls in SF will not use this; I talk to a lot of them because I run a dating startup and they're already very hesitant about meeting complete strangers for drinks. If anything, launch this thing in Las Vegas and be the Uber for prostitution.
- There's nothing here that stands out as compelling as a way to overcome the chicken and egg problem. A wait list is not going to solve that problem for you.