“Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder, while even median men are mostly ignored.“

Is that even true? I am not very pretty (but fit and some level of intelligence ) . When I did online dating I had no problems connecting to women around my age and with similar attributes. Most guys who were complaining wanted a supermodel half their age. And they were surprised that they only attracted crazy people that way.

Yes, OkCupid did a study awhile back which they unfortunately took down. You can still find archived versions of it.

Is this the one? https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo...

That's the one.

> Attractive, fit, intelligent men

By and large these are results of choices people make, not accidents.

A guy with visible abs didn't just wake up one day and have abs. He put in the work. Same goes for attractive or intelligent.

Taking time to find clothes that fit, discovering a flattering hair style, and generally not being a slob can put an average man into the "attractive" group.

By intelligent, I mean "witty" or a good conversationalist. Wit/conversation are learned skills. Yeah, some people are better at it than others, but you can still learn.

Don't feel trapped on the outside. You can be excellent if you so choose.

I didn't feel right about putting it in my original comment, since it didn't seem relevant and honestly it feels weird to type this out on HN, but I'm attractive. Before Tinder and Bumble I didn't have trouble dating but now it's crazy. It's effortless to get dates with attractive, successful women. Things didn't used to be this imbalanced and I don't think it is completely fair to say to someone with a less attractive face or to someone that isn't over six feet that they should learn how to dress properly and that will sort things out for them. Yes exercise and proper nutrition go a long way, and I tell multiple people a month about the basics of nutrition[0] or about how to exercise[1] but I don't pretend that this will fix everything. I think it is important that lucky people are honest about the current situation.

[0] Way more fibre, no refined sugar, more protein, no transfats.

[1] Bike to get around and http://reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness

Adding: 90% of health and fitness is momentum and environment. If you live in a food desert, you're screwed. If you have a history of bad gym experiences, you're screwed. If you have a job that makes gym-time difficult, you're screwed. If your housing costs preclude a gym membership and the necessary quantities of healthy food, you're screwed. If you can't cook or afford healthy takeout, you're screwed. If you have sleep apnea and can't get it treated you're screwed. The list goes on and on. And getting back on the wagon is harder than staying on it.

If you provided a robust right to housing (low waiting lists, high choice) and expanded the armed forces' commissary program to build and stock stores in places where it would be unprofitable or undesirable for a private entity to operate, obesity (or, at least, morbid illness) rates would plummet. (This would also completely reshape our economy, so I understand any reticence to implement.)

Two books that have been useful to me are "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "When I Say No I Feel Guilty".

> Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder, while even median men are mostly ignored.

I exported my data from Tinder and I've had to swipe 25,000 times per successful long-term relationship.

That's a pretty terrible ratio but it only works out to ~10 hours of swiping and another ~10 hours of dating per successful relationship that lasts months or years (or maybe forever!)

As a result I've only been single for a small minority of my adult life.

I agree about the toxicity of social media, it's why I don't have an Instagram and, well, Facebook is dead among my generation anyway so it's not an issue.

>Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder, while even median men are mostly ignored.

Is this a real problem though? I've heard about how women rate most men as below average, yada yada, but monogamy is still dominant, it's not like these hot men are building harems---on aggregate the vast majority will end up with a life partner, just as always. Am I missing something?

You're missing a few pieces that contribute to the decay of society:

- No they don't build harems, but they are more likely to wait before settling down with a long term partner.

Also, perhaps it's the circles I've run in, but monogomy is far less dominant than it was in the past, and serial dating is far more common, especially when you start looking at some folks interpretations of 'empowerment'. I'm using airquotes here because I'm thinking of someone who would literally always be 'getting over' her last relationship with her current one, but would be checking OKCupid and POF because they were starting to have doubts about the current one.

There's a question of how much psychological damage online dating scene does to how one deals with interpersonal relationships. Most of the 'serial' daters I know get more and more bitter with every failed date, and post more and more vitrol on social media about the opposite gender.

There's also the issue that Dating profiles really often remove so much of the important part of a relationship; getting to know someone, which is a good test of communication.

Definitely agree with this.

I have a roommate that serial dates and she's gradually gone from "im getting over my breakup" after dating a man for 3 years to "ug can we just get rid of men" and telling my girlfriend to dump me when I'm standing in the room. She's gotten very bitter, and self-destructive to her original intention (finding a soulmate) breaking things off with new guys when they don't pick her up random things or run odd errands.

While this is just one example of the few I've seen, and of course this is just my experience, but I would hypothesize that serial dating combined with a culture of "empowerment" + unlimited options is detrimental.

Serial dating? Parallel dating is in nowadays!

This sounds like the philosophy that drives the incel groups.

If you were to ask women they would say the exact same thing as well. And internet dating is very heavily driven towards superficial things, whereas if you meet someone IRL you might be able to find things to connect on.

It’s a logical fallacy to imply that someone’s argument sounding similar to the ideology of people you don’t like has any bearing on whether it’s valid or not.

> No, internet dating is no different than real life, it just mirrors the nature of things and is very harsh.

It's a little different. People are typically more polite in person. Their behaviour online reflects what they would do if there were no consequences.

Also, I think if presented with a list of interests online, you'd be more inclined to rule people in or out of contention. Whereas, if you met in person, you might notice chemistry before you realised you liked different movies and music, for example.

uh “Attractive, fit, intelligent” seems like a winning combination regardless of the era.

Yes, but Attractive, fit and intelligent are different in every era.

This effect is called hypergamy and it's always been around. Tinder and the likes just exaggerate it. It's sort of like increasing wealth inequality but for men's dating. There's been genetic studies which show that most women that have lived procreated, while during some periods most men did not. Upside is that if you belong to the top 5% of attractive men this is the best time to be alive :)

Don't date online? It's not surprising that an image-based communication medium will favor physically attractive people. You don't have to play that game if you would actually make a good partner.