Why dating is hard
Edit: because a few comments make me worry that some are taking this seriously - this meme is a play on the type of hopeless dating posts you might find in less healthy corners of the internet. The joke is a suggestion that the real problem is that one man in the image has some sort of arrow-attracting superpower.
Damn, people just straight-up don't care about the content of an image if they see an opportunity to go on a tangent.
I wonder how ridiculous you have to make the text- paired with a pictograph of a problematic take like the original for this one- before people realize it's not actually repeating the original sentiment or even saying anything at all
I love those edits
Society is borked in many ways, and dating sites often reinforce this with their policies.
The Wikipedia article about online dating tells that typical (I assume: card stack, like / dislike) dating sites cause different genders to adopt different strategies:
Men liked a large proportion of the profiles they viewed, but received returning likes only 0.6% of the time; women were much more selective but received matches 10% of the time. Men received matches at a much slower rate than women. Once they received a match, women were far more likely than men to send a message, 21% compared to 7%, but they took more time before doing so.
By sending out questionnaires to frequent Tinder users, the researchers discovered that the reason why men tended to like a large proportion of the women they saw was to increase their chances of getting a match. This led to a feedback loop in which men liked more and more of the profiles they saw while women could afford to be even more selective in liking profiles because of a greater probability of a match.[15]
P.S.
My biggest peeve is that the monopolist Match Group (runs Tinder, bought and ruined OkCupid, etc) and its nearest competitor Bumble have both adopted a card stack system that makes searching impossible. They also won't display any statistics to a user about the number of people who saw their profile - keeping their customer in perfect darkness.
In most fields of life, a customer would not be satisfied with this kind of shit. A company advertising their product would demand instant feedback about the number and profile of people who viewed their ad, where they came from, how long they browsed, etc.
Basically, we are all getting scammed by a few monopolists, who are actively ruining people's ability to find partners. I would support a politician who promises to let the best university in the country to build a non-profit dating site.
What is okcupid like nowadays? I found a partner there like 7 years ago and out of all the dating sites I've tried, it was the best by a good margin.
It no longer respects geographical preferences. Here in Estonia, if you go on OkCupid from Tallinn, you see about 30 Finnish people from Helsinki (across the sea, 80 km away) before you encounter a local (you also get 30 likes from Central Africa and South-East Asia).
It also has the card stack system now.
The question system remains and remains helpful, just the rest is broken.
So what you're saying is to go to an archery field to find a woman! I've been doing it wrong the whole time!
You might not get hit on but you will get hit
Fair warning, the naked fat guy with the bow and arrow is not Cupid. He is just an exhibitionist. An arrow to the heart will NOT make you fall in love.
To be fair, I've never talked to anyone whose been properly shot in the heart and didn't go on to quickly find love. Makes you think..
After chatting her up very well, she'll miss you. But her aim will get better.
Joke's on that guy, all the women on the Internet are really just this guy:
Hehe teen girl squad!
Possums........
Every day this site becomes closer to reddit.
They grow up so fast
You should read the edit.
Edit: because a few comments make me worry that some are taking this seriously - this meme is a play on the type of hopeless dating posts you might find in less healthy corners of the internet. The joke is a suggestion that the real problem is that one man in the image has some sort of arrow-attracting superpower.
Ignoring the issue with jokes doesn't help anyone.
Mocking incels doesn't make them better.
It feels good though.
This is reddit behavior.
This is absolutely how online dating goes. There have been studies that show women always go for the most attractive guys on the site, despite whatever BS they might claim.
Real life, not necessarily.
A more detailed description:
Provided a card stack system, the dynamic balance of liking vs. skipping tends to stabilize into a state where men like everyone reasonably cute ("to get more chances"). This is also caused by their inability search for a conversation partner in a rational manner, because it's a card stack system. Often enough, all the information you have is a photo, age and city.
This causes women to experience a saturation of likes: everyone likes them. This causes them to be extremely picky about who they like back.
The result: unbalance. Dating sites view women as a "resource" to attract men, and men as customers to be scammed out of money to actually show their profile to someone, once in a while.
There was a blog by the creator of OKcupid, which was available on the site, that laid all this out pretty clearly. Something like 80% of the women were after 20% of the men, or perhaps it was even worse than that.
Women also, on average, rated men something like 1.5/5, whereas the average for men rating women was almost exactly 3/5.
It was a pretty depressing read actually.
You have to also look at the fact that men outnumber women on the app overall. It's about 65% men, so women are going to have a bigger pool to reject from. And while it is true that women rate men less attractive, they also put less value on their apperence overall as a factor in dating. It also came out that this was based off of first glance only with no review of the profiles attached to them and, when looking at overall trends, it's more even, (outside of men tending to like young women regardless of their age).
I think the okcupid data also went on about how certain races get more or less attention as well. At the end of the day, both sides can be picky. I think people like to push that data to help with the "80/20" idea to help push this idea that men are now being unfairly judged in comparison to women to help with the gender war narrative.
Edit: Just wanted to add that I don't think that means dating isn't hard for men, but I just don't believe dating websites to be a reflection of real life.
This says more about how women are socially pressured to wear make up, dress well, wax, and de-age themselves or risk being labeled as 'unwomanly' or become irrelevant.
How many men do you know feel pressured to put the same effort into their appearances as the average woman does?
And don't tell me how working out counts. One, there are zero health benefits to putting on make up. Two, women are incessantly reminded about losing weight rather than just be healthy whether it's from the media, advertisements, or just people using 'fat' as an insult especially for middle aged women.
How often do you hear old women being complimented on their appearances compared to old men? Forget about appearances, how often are they relevant in conversations? Invisible Woman Syndrome is almost like a super power.
But what's attractive is very subjective especially for women. Yes there are some general things being somewhat fit, decent hygiene, symmetrical proportions but there are plenty of studies that show women find the same man with a wide range of attractiveness vs men who have a much more narrow and agreed upon what is attractive. One thing that's more consistent is appearance of wealth makes men more attractive to most women.
I suspect that women have dual mode sexual selection: Either dad material then attractiveness doesn't matter as much as stable personality and material conditions, or someone with attractive exceptional genes. Meanwhile men will only judge by attractiveness but men (including the attractive ones) will still fuck anything.
Basically game theory and the structure of dating apps makes women only be able to select for the first criteria.
To make this more accurate for modern dating apps, you should keep all the men, but only have like 3 of the women. Dating apps aren't there to get you a match, they're there to convince you that you will get a match...eventually. The money is in creating a feeling that doesn't reflect reality.
So a possible answer is to live as a hermit in the middle of nowhere. And if a woman appears for some reason, she will have no choice but your long bearded, long matted haired, musk scented, disheveled, gaunt self as a possible mate.
Ah, the actual 'last possible mate in the world' strategy.
We must procreate for thr human species!
lol
Dating apps are VEERY superficial. You are better off meeting people in real life.
Pro tip: Become Leonidas
and what, fight in the shade?
I would definitely not want to fight in the sun, so it makes sense to me.
Ah I was gonna say Boromir. :p
I know it’s a joke, but I feel like to be fair to both genders, each man here should arrows pointing to every woman.
The original image, and your extension, are an emergent behavior as a result of The Algorithm - due to "scarcity", Player B (men) is (are) encouraged to roll the dice as frequently as possible.
This whole dynamic is real, results in negative interactions for both players, and is intentionally set up by the apps to maintain engagement and extract as much money via pay-to-play advantages as possible. Dating apps are rigged to give men and women bad experiences so they (largely men) become desperate enough to pay $25 a month or whatever to have an unfair advantage.
The internet (and other players!) likes to hate the players, not the game, and the only "comfort" many young men have is Tate and Co.
Dating apps are rigged to give men and women bad experiences so they (largely men) become desperate enough to pay $25 a month or whatever to have an unfair advantage.
It gets worse, as the engagement mechanic populates the apps with a particular kind of guy who is obnoxiously aggressive, persistent, and convinced that this is a game they can brute force with time/money. So women end up being introduced to a string of guys who believe they've "won" a date by "beating" the game while women are left fishing for profiles that don't look completely gross or insane.
And that's before you get into end-users who are straight up escorts or pimps or predators, fully internalizing the idea that site participants are just resources to extract.
It isn't merely about giving people a bad experience, but to give them a cheap thrill that keeps them coming back to the apps without ever finding a fulfilling relationship that would render the website superfluous.
The internet (and other players!) likes to hate the players, not the game, and the only “comfort” many young men have is Tate and Co.
Tate on one side and Estee Williams on the other. Men are told to treat women like a commodity - interchangeable, disposable, and ultimately hostile to your personal interests - that you rent out when you've accrued enough surplus wealth. Women are told to embrace submissiveness, obsess over superficial appearance, and pursue men based entirely on their socio-economic status in pursuit of the same kind of passive incomes that Tate is selling.
These conservative icons put men and women into an inherent contradictory position, with the idea of two people coming together as collaborators (much less romantic partners) is fully alien. You're purchasing a man's income with your looks. He's purchasing your looks with his hustle-money. You're both purchasing the other's status, with an eye towards a higher rung on the ladder. Neither one of sees the other as a life partner.
with some exceptions... the abnormally skinny man has an unhealthy fixation on fat women, but its not love and anyone will do, and a few on each side are gay, some aren't interested in anyone at all, some only interested in themselves, etc
If you're an average guy tempted to believe this, allow me, as an average guy who gets plenty of women, to tell you how it works. You are the one with the arrows, but if you don't shoot your shot, out of fear of rejection, you're never going to get what you want. So get out there and start shooting your shot.
Straight up, the best living proof of this I've ever seen was a fifty-odd year old co-worker whose face looked like if you stuck Don Knotts' face in a microwave/centrifuge combination for about 45 seconds. Dude had teeth poking out forward at near right angles. He pulled so much fucking tail, it was a constant problem at work. Incels refuse to believe me when I tell them about it, but, just, shit, idk what you want me to say, this quasi modo ass dude had game, so what's your excuse?
Fucking same, man. Guy I used to work with was 57, alcoholic, had like 3 teeth left, bad attitude, the works. Looked like a man-rat hybrid had been drinking moonshine and gasoline for two centuries. Brought a new woman home from the bars at least once a week. Some of them half his age. I know he wasn't rich either because I'd been to his house before and I occasionally had to lend him some cash, so it's not like he was flexing with money.
I got to actually hear him put the moves on somebody once and I don't remember his opener but I shit you not his winning line was "Yeah I tell ya, I'm hung like a pimple but I've had some good practice with it, wanna come see?" and a little wink and I swear on my ancestors it fucking worked, it's insane, I thought I was having a stroke.
The fact that dating apps allow you to filter by height and not weight literally says it all
I remember hitting puberty and realizing most of the guys had crushes on the same three or four basic makeup pasted fake ass girls so….sure whatever you say
As a guy I can assure you this isn't true.
Found the femcel
Even now, I regret rejecting a girl outright because I feel like a jerk.
Nof because there was any chance that would work out.
Dating shouldn't be monetized. Even sending messages often requires a subscription. You'll also notice these dating app companies own several products, like the Match Group. They buy up competitors or spam out the same software under different names with a marketing campaign to try to get people to join. Then they restrict features and charge more to maintain their position. That's without even getting to all the data they collect and sale while also charging you a subscription. Just imagine talking to someone you want to date in real life and having a middle man come up and say, if you want to talk to them you need to give me $20 a month. All the "science" they use to connect people is just bullshit too.
If dating apps worked, they wouldn’t really “work” under capitalism - you’d find someone, cancel the subscription and move on.
The only really exception is if you focus on hookups or polyamory, but het cis women tend to risk a lot more on hookups (at bare minimum pregnancy and side effects related to whatever precautions are being used to prevent it), so they aren’t going to seek them out and they tend to get flooded with low quality messages anyway.
No matter what your age, race, gender, sex, size, you can always find a man willing to put their dick inside your orifices. Grindr works so well because it’s basically just old school cruising culture with extra frills. Match Group uses it’s monopoly to impose a dating culture that doesn’t really match with how het people form relationships.
Damn Windrunners
my dude if this were to be true we would experience total population collapse
I mean, good meme but no, wouldn't it need to be the inverse to cause this?
good point but I imagined this one guy does not impregnate all of these women but it is of course possible to go full Elon Musk if he thinks he is destined to save humanity
Children of Men Guy
Sperm retention 😭
welcome to everyone joining us from /r/incel (is that still a thing, even?)
The only choice is to be totally out of the dating game so completely that you have no idea what any of this even mean.
Me going about my hermit ways living in the forest without interacting with anyone 😌
Don't blame Boromir for your dry dick, for shame
This is a depiction of why Kaladin can’t quite save all of Bridge 4 in The Way of Kings.
Came here to say, Strength Before Weakness.
Life before death!
Also why you can't take him out to a bar, storming brighteyes..
well noted this down as my next book thanks
Man why’d you have to bring that up
Ah bere it is, I have scrolled deep enough
Delete all the text and this diagram looks like:
One male medieval era soldier fighting for an oppressive patriarchy, in a battle where his fellow soldiers surrendered after realizing they are the baddies, surrounded by an army of women-only skilled archers fighting for egalitarianism.
they just killed a random innocent dude though :(
Every single one of those girls is clearly an arrowhead-repeller. (Men have it so easy.)
He was just asking for it, look at the way his knees were dressed
Notice how the third woman in line is aiming for the dick.
Poor #4 had to settle for knees.
Poor #4 had to settle for knees.
Settle? We don't kink shame here, sir.
This meme ha a terminal case of Poe's Law.
Most people's problems are shit profiles and bad swiping.
Find/take good photos. I used photofeeler to test my photos and it helped.
Have a decent short bio that has something the girl can bring up. Mine was my hatred of mayo, almost all my matches brought it up as a discussion point. On Bumble it was most often the ice breaker.
Don't swipe right on the 8/9/10s that you have zero chance at. If a girl out of your range has a profile that describes you sure swipe right otherwise don't swipe on girls you have zero shot with. It messes your algorithm up. If you want to fantasize about hot chicks look at porn otherwise be honest about what you bring to the table and swipe in your realistic range. If you're a 3 a 5 should be your 10.
Advice from a decent looking (but def not hot) slightly overweight at times person, who got my fair share of dates, some hookups, and some girlfriends from online dating in a smallish dating pool.
Met my wife randomly through a coworker 🤷♂️.
Most people’s problems are shit profiles and bad swiping.
Most people's problem is they do online dating.
When all your friends are in one circle and all are married and you don't go to bars or the gym it's better than nothing. I enjoyed it for the most part, definitely got laid more often.
In the short stint that I bothered trying to use a dating app I just swiped right on people I was attracted to and seemed compatible based on their bio.
If I wasn't physically attracted to them it wouldn't work anyway so IDK why I'd want to waste my time???
But yeah I gave up not because of the swiping/algo but because in a few cases people misrepresented themselves or were overly vague in their bios. In one case someone swiped right on me but then changed their mind because the reread my bio (read the fucking bio in the first place people) or in one case we had made plans to hook up and so I kind of got busy and stopped messaging them for a few days, they messaged me annoyed that I was not showering them in consistent attention and disconnected.
After that I was like, online dating sucks fuck this, and uninstalled.
The irony of the original graph is that if you draw the arrows that go the other way, they’re symmetrical.
Of course people are more attracted to attractive people. That’s literally why it’s called “being attractive”.
ouch, my bones
It's like electrons.
Oh man, one could supply an entire army with the arrows shot at that guy, I'll tell you hwat.
The reverse reason is also that the pink blobs will receive arrows from all of the blue blobs. Blue blobs just reduce their market value that way.
This isn’t true at all. Everywhere you see average guys out there with girls. Yes, attractive people gain attention. But also, average people date.
It’s the reality of dating apps, not real world behavior.
I mean, dating apps are also just "real world behavior", we don't suddenly leave the real world by picking up a phone.
The effect is just much much more pronounced on dating apps because of logistics, you can't get hit on by 100 of the hottest guys in your area in 5 minutes in real life, maybe you get hit on by 20 guys the whole evening. And those 20 guys are a local dating pool, which may not necessarily include the 20 hottest guys out of the whole area, so the hottest one of the 20 may still be average.
It’s the reality of dating apps, not real world behavior.
This is some incel level manosphere bullshit recruitment material.
The OG is, this is edited and is made to mock the OG.
If every incel could get an arrow to the knee, they would be cured
this smells like incel
Any time men complain about anything related to dating:
It's because it has that "80/20" energy some like to push. Not so much a complaint on dating overall, only the "women only one six feet, six figures, six inches" narrative.
Buddy, the edit doesn't help. Repeating propaganda or misinformation and saying but this instance is satirical doesn't help. You're still just spreading their talking points for them.
Huh? The meme is suggesting that it isn't a hierachy or tiered list but physical proximity attracting th arrows from the other stick figures. Did anyone read the picture??
If that was true wouldn't all the arrows just go straight across?
this is such an incel though. Please explain that all the girls in this image are also the same girl using the same outfit with the same hair and the same body shape.So if you revert the image to guys on the left and girls on the right it would also be true
This graph is so wrong in so many ways...
Dating is hard because we live miserable lifes, are very individualized by capitalism, deposit lots of expectations and pities of ourselves into others, and don't treasure (intimate) friendship enough, intergender and intergenerational friendship included.
The "average guy" has poor emotional skills, is depressed, has no real friends and thinks that a girlfriend will be his salvation. The "average guy" needs therapy, friends, needs to learn to listen, to empathise and to show his own vulnerability instead of hiding and pretending to be a rock. That is, learn to take care of himself and to take care of others, and value this as an unavoidable adult skill. The "guy who attracts arrows" probably needs the same, but has a higher sexual capital because of birth lottery.
Focus on making some sense of your own life first and interesting people will start popping out, you will make some friends, and at some point you will mate someone.
Marriage and the nuclear family is a product of the Catholic church teaming up with capitalism. Western history and non-western world is full of extended families and communities. Consider not making it your life goal, it can be disappointing to achieve it.