From Swiping to Sexting: The Gender Divide in American Dating and Relationships (opens in new tab)

You're not wrong that dating platforms are like that (Tinder, I think being the most obvious) -- and you seem to have direct experience with this -- but suggesting that people start platonically is very ... Sunday church style.

I guess everyone is different, but for me relationships that start out platonically...end up platonic. If nothing happens in the first 3-5 dates...nothing ever will really. I realize that's part of "dating" culture too -- but there is also something behind it -- if I'm REALLY attracted to someone, I'll put the moves on earlier (or they will etc).

What I have had good success in -- and there is something to this I believe -- is meeting romantic partners in similar interest social circles that appeal to both (or however many there are now) genders. You meetup with others of similar interest for a couple of hours once a week, natural attraction forms, if both are interested the independent romantic meeting will happen naturally. The dating nature of it is all -- hidden (and in fact I didn't go into these meetings planning to date anyways).

It's hard to bottle that up exactly into an app though.

They're not less important, they're table stakes. Is there wiggle room, sure. Maybe sometimes people are capable of being a little more flexible on these things than they realize.

But for example, I think this is true of just about everyone: there's an age range that they're willing to date within, and outside of that range, everyone is a hard pass.

I wouldn't date someone who was twice my age, no matter how great their personality was, it's an absolute no.

Similarly if we use BMI as a proxy for attractiveness. This one may be a little more controversial but I suspect just about everyone has a BMI range they are comfortable with, and if someone is far enough outside of that range, there is no chance, no matter what anyone says, that you are going to date them.

I agree that most dating platforms are hostile to their customers but I think the issues there run much deeper. They all have incentives to _keep you engaged with their platform for as long as possible_, that is how they make the most money. They don't make money by finding you a partner. They are really just social media that can charge a monthly membership fee.

> When you buy a car, what is your first filter to narrow the market?

Price

Used to attended wide variety of Meetups and used Couch Surfer too. It’s pretty obvious when people are attending or using a platform for dating, though they rarely say so. For example, hosts that only host attractive females on Couch Surfer. Or meetups where attendees leave if there’s no attractive female that are in attendance or only talk to the attractive females. Even females that are interested in dating are easy to spot too in my experience. — Very rarely are people that are interested in dating taking a friends first approach, it’s time consuming, and to my knowledge no platform that enables users to build a “friend reputation score” based on users rating them.

Also relatively easy to spot hosts like this if you know how — though platform oddly doesn’t actively ban users doing this.

Honestly, I don’t think a lot of users understand how potentially dangerous some online services are or for that matter, how to manage or recognize risks; not to mention platforms generally hide their risks, since it impacts user engagement.

Not really true, but is true that it’s highly random and takes a large sample in my experience to actually find someone.

In my experience, all the event types mentioned are largely attended by single people looking for dates. Even the language exchange groups, which have a highly specific and functional intent, tend to be single oriented.

On the flipside, if platform attempted to enforce maintaining 50/50 balance of user base that’s single or not single and explicit forbids users mentioning dating unless they are above a predefined “friend score” — it would remove a lot of people that are not interested in relationship attributes.

Agree. Most obvious example being people’s self evaluation of attractiveness relative to their evaluation of another person’s attractiveness. That said, pretty easy to tell if someone humble, pragmatic, etc — just by engaging them.

No, vast amounts of people that see being open minded as a negative predictor of a desirable attribute. If I had to guess, your sampling is biased. For example, someone dating in a rural region would have much less success sharing that they’re open minded, since it’s not a cultural norm.

I concede that was not a good rhetorical point to make, and I should have checked what Google summarizes as "the answer."

Here's a karma point.

Yes, I concede that was not a good rhetorical point to make.

My reaction to the parent comment came from my feeling that men expecting their girlfriends to never confront them or disagree, especially in public, is a much more common, and generally accepted, dynamic.

The fundamentalist interpretation, as I understand, is that husband and wife should be devoted to each other but the husband's authority is final, and a kind of tie breaker in a disagreement.

But yeah, at scale its probably an edge case.

It's a date, not a lifetime commitment. And who knows, maybe the fat woman is worth knowing?

Do you post on liberal sources "Disclaimer: this comes from a liberal source" too? If you're not doing it uniformly, regardless of bias, then yes, you are poisoning the well.

You haven't argued that it isn't well-poisoning, just that you believe the well-poisoning is justified.

Choosing what facts to present, when to present them, and to what audience, is itself a judgement. Pretending its not is deceptive.

Exactly. Who cares where the data came from. Data is data.