I'm not in the dating scene, but I think there's some solid numbers to backup that for men to be successful in the
online shopping online dating realm, they have to bring everything to the table. Good looks, humor, projecting wealth, and be a unicorn. Scott Galloway on his various podcasts when he talks about this phenomenon has always thrown out some statistic that something like
70% 90% of women in online dating apps say that they're only winning to entertain 10% of male partners on the app, it's like the ultimate scarcity, so like 10% of men do reasonably well in online dating, 90% of men don't, and then as a result, it leads to dissatisfaction on both ends.
Sorry, he says ...
if there are 50 women on an app and 50 men, 46 women are interested in 4 men, and en vironment where 10% of the men get 90% of the positive activity in the app, it ends up rewarding behavior that tends not to result in long term happiness. If one man who is very handsome, fit, and projects wealth can have positive results with an abundance of women, it's less likely that guy is going to want to build a meaningful relationship with one woman, and instead continue using the app as a hook up app to meet those needs. I don't think that this is a blame game either, like I don't think "90% of women are doing the wrong thing on dating apps," or that "10% of men are doing the wrong thing on dating apps," it's the natural result of how most dating apps were designed.
[edit: Going back to edit this post because while I've heard these numbers repeated a lot, I don't have any source for this original data, just something I've heard people say unchallenged. Someone shared a video on Page 6 of someone pushing back against different but similar numbers, but those numbers came from Jordan Peterson, the canadian conservative troll, and while I don't really associate the the liberal Scott Galloway with Peterson, without the data it's hard to say whether his numbers came from someone else parrotting Peterson or something, so adding this edit as a caveat. Still, while I don't know about the veracity of the numbers, my point is more to do with the loneliness epidemic, unhappiness with app based dating, and the commoditization of relationships, which I think has always been present to a degree but has accellerated quickly and is broader than just dating/sexual/romantic relationships]
The qualities that come through on app based dating are mostly looks and a small ability to project your personality. It's really hard to get aspects of your personality out there. When people were primarily meeting through school, work, and leisure, someone who might not be a 10 can compensate with something that makes him (or her) a lot more present to someone else. Back 15 years ago in the bar dating scene, this was scanning the crowd for someone who kinda fit your bill what you were into, looking at each other over and over again for the night, until one person goes over and makes a move, starts talking, starts dancing near the other person, and so on, and then some aspect of who you are can come out without it being a sterile shopping environment on an app. It;s also not just "the bar," but also ... church, class, work, social events, sports, volunteering, etc. "Showing up" and "putting yourself out there" was the primary hill to climb, and people who might not be the perfect match looks wise or ... ability to project success wise ... might do well for themselves on the dating scene just be showing up. It's different now, and app based dating or service based dating has commoditized dating in a way that it wasn't entirely commoditized before... dating/relationships have always aspects of being a commodity, but now it's much closer to shopping for the perfect toaster on Amazon than it was before.
I think online dating is disastrous for relationship building, like how online shopping was disastrous for local retail. Can you find the perfect toaster for $30 on Amazon? For sure. It's worth it as a consumer to do that. But does it put your local consumer appliance store out of business, which hurts your local community because there's now a scarcity of jobs? Yes, it does. A short term benefit creating a longer term problem, or simply an issue that we don't have the tools to solve anymore... The tools we try to solve problems with, these days, are more apps. What I think is really interesting is that a lot of the solutions being proposed in the app dating game, IMO, are mising the mark. The rise of Christian dating apps in the last 5 years is motivated by the idea that "Well there's just no good men on those other dating apps, they're only interested in one thing," or "Well no women like me on those other apps, they're all men hating feminists," and so you've had this growth in christian, conservative dating apps but those apps are going to see the same issue, because they're not solving the problem of treating relationship building like a commodity.
thehill.com
