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The Problem With Internet Dating's Frictionless Market
Hugh Pickens writes "Peter Ludlow writes in the Atlantic that the internet has turned the dating marketplace into a frictionless market that puts together buyer and seller without transaction costs. And that's a bad thing. 'Finding a partner used to be expensive, and the market was inefficient. If you lived in a large city, there were always people looking for partners, but the problem was how to find them.' But one advantage of inefficient dating markets is that in times of scarcity we sometimes take chances on things we wouldn't otherwise try while in times of plenty, we take the path of least resistance (someone who appears compatible) and we forgo difficult and prima facie implausible pairings. Another problem with frictionless online markets (PDF) is that assume we know what we are looking for. But sometimes we simply don't know what we are looking for until we stumble across it in a search for something else, says Ludlow. 'The result is often unexpected and beautiful. So it is with relationships; compatibility is a terrible idea in selecting a partner,' concludes Ludlow. 'We often make our greatest discoveries and acquire our greatest treasures when local scarcity compels us to be open to new and better things.'"
well, lets hope it's as frictionless as possible...inadequate lube leads to broken condoms and accidental babies.
Did the author just tell us that sometimes it's better to simply "settle" for whoever you can find instead of finding someone compatible? :)
sigh, yeah, I miss all the pussy I got on AOL.
Are the divorce rates changing or staying the same? That would lend some credence to his arguement that the old, difficult method produces a more beautiful and unexpected match. The problem with the old method is that it's often a game of attrition, namely you keep dating until you give up on finding someone that you are lifetime compatible with, and settle whoever's around at the time.
Go to the stacks looking for stuff, and bring home stacks of non related but vastly interesting reading material you had not thought to look at.
I met my wife through a good, and free, online dating service. The problem with the ones you pay for is that most of the members(95%?) can not reply back and they make it impossible to tell who is a paying member or non-paying member. But a good service allows you to find someone that is a great match. Without online services you have what? Bars, work, church? Even then you have to hope for good timing and the geographical range is limited.
The articles statement about you taking people for granted is BS. Some might, but that's because they have issues that exist outside of online dating. Know what you want and don't be afraid to set deal breakers. If you hate smoking and can't deal with it, no smokers, or the reverse if you love smoking. You need to be honest with yourself and your potential mate.
Saying "libraries are better than ebooks" is like saying "Video stores are better than movies"; you're comparing the distribution model with the product it's distributing. Also, the "discovery" aspect of libraries (and bookstores) is present with online bookstores too. Have you never been to Amazon.com?
Staying single is more popular than ever before.
This is probably because of a few factors:
1) being wealthier means people don't need each other as much. Being more able to survive and find entertainment alone makes your time worth more and your need for a partner diminishes, so we would expect fewer people would date.
2) the culture of equality has made dating a lot harder than it used to be. Modern couples are no longer a leader and a follower, but rather two leaders. Naturally, that doesn't work well in most cases.
3) People, by virtue of being able to afford more luxury, develop a sense of entitlement that drives potential mates away. Men expect that their greater wealth means that hotter women will throw themselves at them, and women expect that their independence + beauty should result in even more devotion (or obsession, as some seem to demand) from even higher quality of men. So, nobody is willing to settle, and when people find someone willing to date them both parties feel like they are settling and expect the other party to act like they are "dating up," and be more devoted....of course THAT doesn't work well either.
Unless breeding is an important goal for you, these days you are usually better off single.
Just move country.
You will be an interesting foreigner. With or without the internet, this gives you an edge.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
We know what we are looking for, and look for what we are looking for, but we don't know what we want. Would a person who shares 20% of our interests be more interesting than someone who shares 80% of our interests because they drive us to new things? Maybe, but when looking, we look for the 100% match because it's easier to find someone who likes the same movies, rather than arguing or trading off preferred movies. Scarcity drives us out of our comfort zone, and our best match may be outside our comfort zone.
Learn to love Alaska
The market be damned. If I can tell at a glance whether a woman spells 'you' as a single vowel or not, society, traditional marriage, the divorce rate, whatever - it can all go to hell.
Specifically, for those of us who have figured out what we want. No more spelunking in bars, hoping the local gaming night has a single female available, or hitting up women in sports clubs. Just a simple hang-out shield. Also helps when being hopelessly shy - email/messaging is much easier than just randomly walking up to someone.
All in all, this is looking really hard for a drawback to online dating. Kinda like the people who argue about how bad it is to have 1 million in the bank, and how simple life was when they had only 1000 dollars in the bank.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Dating sites come with a bunch of filters. Find me a well education intelligent white catholic girl (hey, I'm atheist but catholic girls' schools seem to produce my sort of woman) who's a good cook, likes to dance, can put up with 4 hours of computer gaming on non-dance nights and has a slim or athletic build.
Or skip the dating site and find yourself with an interesting person that has few of those attributes but is great to spend time with. Bonus if it's a girl and she fancies you.
That said, I'm still reluctant to ask out the intelligent female dancer that's about my age and fancies me, purely because we have the same dress size. Sadly I appear to be sufficiently superficial to want someone slimmer than I am.
I don't understand how this is even /. related news.
Consider the number of young readers who live at their parent's place. Or the number of more seasoned readers who might be divorced, or still single, and aren't going as much as they should.
I know my library doesn't, they close as soon as school is out, and are not open on the weekends. I have never even been in the place and I am starting to wonder if they actually do unlock the door once in a while.
It tries to solve a mathematical problem. How can we maximize marital bliss – or at least one night stands - when the users have a heuristic basis which leads to a suboptimal selection process?
Exactly what this guy says, as well. From the article:
I don’t know if the editors of The Atlantic have found a goldmine of reader interest in the topic or if they are just irritated by their kids being online all the time, but once again we read in their pages that the Internet is destroying the good life. In 2008 Google was making us stupid; last year Facebook was making us lonely (it isn’t); and now online dating is “threatening monogamy.”
Right, but considering the recent corporate buyout at Slashdot and the degrading subject matter we are forced to bless with our craftiness, can this website AFFORD to lose many of us right now to girlfriends with Sex & the City boxed sets?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'm separated, and I can't think of any good reasons to be in a relationship again.
Probably because you haven't met the reason yet. It's ok to be single. If the right person comes along, wonderful. If not, enjoy whatever suits you.
Now you go online, select a partner, and you are immediately dating someone who is at least interested in you. Of course online dating is still work, but the emotional labor and risk of failure has been significantly reduced.
Methinks TFA is complaining about a problem that doesn't actually exist. At least from the male perspective, online dating has a great deal of friction.
You can't just select a partner and immediately start dating them. You need to message them. It better be good or they don't respond. Actually, they probably won't respond even if it is good.
You need to do this over and over again until you get a response.
After you get a response, you need to carry about a conversion for a little while until you can arrange a first date. Most will stop replying before you reach that stage.
Only after you've met and your date hasn't stood you up or canceled at the last minute for no reason are you dating. Everything before that is just a headache.
The market has just as much friction as before. It has just moved from the finding to the getting part. It's like shopping online where there are many shops selling but hardly have stock and none will tell you one way or the other until after you've filled out a detailed order form.
Consider the number of young readers who live at their parent's place. Or the number of more seasoned readers who might be divorced, or still single, and aren't going as much as they should.
Or Widowed. Together at 22 (she was 41) for 20 years (married for 16 years, 3 weeks). She was diagnosed w/a brain tumor the day before Thanksgiving 2005; spent our last Thanksgiving, Anniversary, Christmas, New Year's together in the hospital. Coma started on Jan 5 and she died on Jan 13, 2006 at 3:00pm; haven't dated anyone since. (P.S. The Winter holidays suck now.)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
>> bring home stacks of... vastly interesting reading material
Binders full of women?
Don't forget the "professional" Child Support moms.
They seduce guys, get a baby, put in a token two years because they need Dad to cover the other half of the diaper stage, then divorce them and collect child support. Then they get new boyfriends for the cuddlin' and help under the table but get to collect the child support as free cash.
Posting as AC because this comment will get pummeled in 12 minutes. But it's true.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I don't understand how this is even /. related news.
All Slashdot topics are there because we don't understand. Like things that are so cold, that they have negative temperature and might be actually hot again. We don't understand, so we discuss it here.
Nobody is better than Slashdotters, at discussing things that they don't understand.
Dating, is something that we definitely don't understand.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Interestingly (or not) this happens to also be how one of the founders of match.com died...
This is Slashdot we are talking about. Nobody is even kissing frogs here.
Licking toads then?
I actually RTFA this time, and it blew my mind!
Turns out I had the whole concept of Internet Dating wrong! I've been dating the Internet itself!
mind-gasm
The article is just a bunch of buzzwords trying to appear profound on that basis. There are only three things that matter in the world of online dating sites: (1) Have an attractive picture, (2) Have an attractive picture, and (3) Make sure your picture is attractive. That's 99.44% of online dating right there. You can write out the most heartfelt and sincere profile in the whole world and it will go unreplied to. Likewise when responding to womens' profiles; I don't think it matters at all what you write beyond a certain minimum of decorum. It's a meat (meet) market, pure and simple, and it's pure Darwinism.
Don't forget the "professional" Child Support moms.
They seduce guys, get a baby, put in a token two years because they need Dad to cover the other half of the diaper stage, then divorce them and collect child support. Then they get new boyfriends for the cuddlin' and help under the table but get to collect the child support as free cash.
Posting as AC because this comment will get pummeled in 12 minutes. But it's true.
Do you have any evidence that this problem actually exists?
1) I don't think child support is that generous, particularly when you consider the costs in time and money of raising a child.
2) Why get rid of the dad? Wouldn't they be able to extract more value by staying in the relationship?
3) I don't think it's nearly as easy for a women with children to attract a man who will support her as you suggest.
I stole this Sig
The problem exists, though I'll say it doesn't necessarily require a marriage to start with. I'll avoid the "Citation needed" gig, and instead reply that you should ask around about the "Head of Household" income tax status on the US tax code. The kids appear, the marriage collapses, and then the father is on the hook by law because the woman doesn't re-marry (which would end the child support). Then the woman "conveniently" gets a new boyfriend in her life who pays for the perks of living, and the child support payments come in on top of that for 18 years but the ex only gets to see the kids twice a week or whatever.
"Why get rid of the dad" is the point, because for the women who do this, sometimes they're all hot and saucy and even like it for a year, but then they get bored and move on but now the kid is in the picture. It's about a lack of commitment to hold down the marriage "for better and worse" etc. And this isn't "we tried for 9 years and it didn't work", just look at the ages of the kids. 2 year olds etc.
It's NOT the majority, but it DOES happen.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Don't forget the "professional" Child Support moms.
They seduce guys, get a baby, put in a token two years because they need Dad to cover the other half of the diaper stage, then divorce them and collect child support. Then they get new boyfriends for the cuddlin' and help under the table but get to collect the child support as free cash.
Posting as AC because this comment will get pummeled in 12 minutes. But it's true.
Do you have any evidence that this problem actually exists?
It only has to happen once for the problem to "exist", but doesn't imply that it happens with any significant frequency. I happen to know someone who has 5 kids to 5 different guys and would be raking in the child support (different arrangement here in AU than in the US, but a similar net effect) if she hadn't picked 5 deadbeats to have kids with.
Posting as AC because this comment will get pummeled in 12 minutes.
Huh. TaoPhoenix. I always wonder who that AC character was.......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well for evidence an article from a reputable newspaper would do (my very brief search didn't find anything). Besides, you're now arguing that the marriage is failing, not as part of a deliberate scheme, but because the woman has no commitment, which is a much weaker claim.
As for "the woman doesn't re-marry (which would end the child support)", and 'cuddling under the table' comment from your first post, this appears to be false. The woman's relationship status does not affect child support. You could be talking about alimony, but that's something completely different (and probably harder to get after a short term marriage).
In short your comment is factually inaccurate and has a chauvinist tone, it should be pummelled.
I stole this Sig
Methinks TFA is complaining about a problem that doesn't actually exist. At least from the male perspective, online dating has a great deal of friction.
Umwelt:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/
For whatever it's worth, I just wanted to offer my sympathies, and best wishes that in the fullness of time you may heal and find love again. (It's not too late -- I'm in my early 40s myself and just started dating someone pretty nifty.) Take care.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This is probably worse than my mother's dog, Chestnut, dying on Christmas eve. That only ruined the one song.
chestnuts roasting on an open fire... jack frost nipping at your nose...
It's all about economics. Women went into the work force in the late seventies, that's what allowed the economy to restructure and prolong itself
You want productivity, right? You want the country producing more stuff, don't you? Putting more people into jobs is a way to do that. More people working == more stuff produced, which is your net productivity. Now, it might not increase your per capita productivity, but it does increase your net productivity.
people have to work more to get less, but you can thank the government for that, with all the inflation, taxes, regulations, which pushed productive jobs elsewhere
Oh, that's right. I forgot that you want to pay employees nothing for their time. You want to be able to buy and sell them like cattle or cord wood on the open market. You want all workers to be "at-will" so that they can be hired and fired on a whim without any avenues for recourse. You want to ensure that power is concentrated in the hands of the very few and kept away from working class people at all costs.
For some reason you call this freedom. Thinking people see this as fascism for the people.
Complete polar opposites personality wise, they met by chance at Princeton in the 30's as she was the recently divorced sister of a colleague of Dirac's. No dating algorithm in the world would have paired them up as matches and yet they had two children and were happily married the rest of their lives. Dirac's own children were at a loss as to how the marriage was successful since it defied logic that a mathematical genius who rarely spoke ended up with a talkative, self described "scientific zero" and yet, there they were.
A computer programmer happens across a frog in the road. The frog pipes up, "I'm really a beautiful princess and if you kiss me, I'll stay with you for a week". The programmer shrugs his shoulders and puts the frog in his pocket.
A few minutes later, the frog says "OK, OK, if you kiss me, I'll give you great sex for a week". The programmer nods and puts the frog back in his pocket.
A few minutes later, "Turn me back into a princess and I'll give you great sex for a whole year!". The programmer smiles and walks on.
Finally, the frog says, "What's wrong with you? I've promised you great sex for a year from a beautiful princess and you won't even kiss a frog?"
"I'm a programmer," he replies. "I don't have time for sex.... But a talking frog is pretty neat!"
I've seen a half dozen of these situations in 30 years and so I can speculate some answers for you.
1) Child support is 23% of the man's income for one child and scales up from there. There is NO requirement or enforcement that the money be spent on the child. If the couple owned a house and the man makes "good money", they are often required to pay part of the house payment while not being allowed to live there. For bonus points, in pro alimony states the man also pays child support.
2) The mom gets nearly complete control over how the child is raised. The dad gets to enforce his rules 6 days a month.. the mom gets the rest. This has declined since 2000 as joint custody occurs more. For bonus points, the 6 days plays out as free weekend baby sitting for the mom.
3) If she's "hot" then it's pretty easy to attract a lothario-- especially if said lothario doesn't have to pay her rent. He doesn't have to support or deal with the kids. But if lothario turns into a step dad... he usually has no say in how the kids are raised. unless she repeats (which I have no personal experience with in 30 years but have heard about third hand). Oh wait.. there was one- high school friend, he was totally in love with one of these. She had 4 kids by 4 guys by the time she was done. And we are pretty sure that his daughter wasn't really his daughter.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
1. Individuals who are in the high attractiveness quandrant, the company I worked with referred to the as "date bacon," have high rates of being replied to, high rates of physical meetings, and moderate levels of dating success. If you are, or present as, a young, never married, childless, photogenic, of median for the site intelligence, and slightly above median earning and intelligence, male, the e-dating world looks like the one in the article: it is easy find partners, though it was fairly obvious who was real (the disappeared after 1-3 physical dates) and who was not (serial daters with complaints coming in after ward). There were some echo quadrants: people who were post a short "starter marriage," which could also have been a non-married domestic LTR, had date bacon like rates of reply etc. There was a distant echo quandrant among post-child individuals. Date bacon was the product: getting these people on was a high intensity activity, because everyone else on the site messaged and joined to message date bacon. This was irrespective of genders and orientations: women had a very narrow range of men the wanted (near their age, but slightly older, attractive, financial success signalling men of above median educational attainment), as did men (who were actually less visually correlated than the women). Date bacon did not stay on the site long, and date bacon indexes were good predictors of matching. Bacon goes with bacon.
2. For everyone else, things were a great deal worse, however for, what was euphemistically terms "alternatively monogamous," read people in sexless marriages who were searching for relationships on the side, had high rates of use, and would score partners out of sheer persistence. The site had an equivocal relationship with cheaters, because these people were the income, but too many and it drove down site stats. I did some work to figure out the optimal level of cheaters. Yes there is one.
3. The least satisfied quadrant was non-date bacon individuals searching for monogamy. The difference here is a factor of about 10 from date bacon. People in this quadrant see a totally different dating world: low rates of reply, few physical dates, low chance of a relationship, though, as you might guess, if people did make it over these hurdles, they tended to leave the site. Males in this population did not stay paid members, were as many females in this population did.
4. There were two other populations, one "the non-daters," mostly women who got replies and were either hostile or non-responsive. Part of the project was to weed these people out, because they were "payment killers." One interaction was enough to get a member to cancel. The other were what the programmers called "subprime," people with significant geographic, personal, or physical barriers, or women with children. This was a fairly large base of people, who were culled periodically because too many again dropped membership rates. Essentially, people who had few other alternatives.
5. Very specific people were also consistent long term users, and were shunted to more specific sub-sites, this is because outside of their subset, they are non-daters, but inside they look more like date bacon. Hence sub-sectioning and bucketing run rampant.
6. The upshot of this is that there is about 10% of the population that e-dating works well, or very well for, and another 20% which has no good alternative. These individuals were satisfied, or at least repeat, users. For another 30% the experience was highly negative, indeed, even soul crushing.
7. YMMV - because personal relationships are heavily based on factors which do not capture from dating sites, many relationships happen even in low probability areas,
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
I just don't think there's the same level and frequency of sociopathy in women as there is in men.
And here is where you are absolutely wrong. Your post was fairly convincing until then.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well, for starters, we geeks (particularly of the 'sysadmin' variety) tend to have a difficult time with relationships. Particularly the good ones who have focused on our careers throughout life instead of learning 'social skills'. We may be kind, loving, thoughtful, and self-sacrificing in our personal relationships but, for the most part, our careers have to come first.
Many women do not understand this. In fact, in today's culture where women are a significant part of the work force, with today's general work ethic, most people in general do not understand this. It's not necessarily a healthy approach to life, but it's how we're wired.
We also happen to be fairly direct and logically oriented. Things like not understanding why a woman would want flowers may sometimes result in us not realizing we should be doing special things for them.
Personally, I'm just coming out of a 10 year marriage. She left for another man she started seeing while I was out of state working and sending money back home. It hurts a hell of a lot, no lie. But I want to be in "a relationship", that's something I need. But I've got kids. How do I juggle my work schedule (oh yeah, I'm on night shift now), full child care responsibilities, and a dating life?
Pretty much the only traditional option I'm left with is strip clubs and a babysitter. Maybe take a little bit of each if I were to get lucky.
So I tried a couple dating sites and met a woman who is astoundingly compatible with me: that is, I enjoy her company like I have no other woman's, we have similar interests and worldviews, and we make each other happy. I wasn't actively seeking, just putting out a line, and I am blown away by the results. If I believed in divine intervention instead of heuristics, that's what I'd say made it happen.
There IS a very big cost associated with online dating, by the way. The 'findings' in the linked article are wrong. Relationships do commerce in trust. The financial side of a relationship is largely extraneous; it isn't what's important, and it isn't what is being bought or sold. If you're looking for a long term relationship, you're expecting your partner to want to do things for you which require trust: make you dinner, bring home a pay check, suck your dick, spread their legs, share their/your inner-most feelings (thoughts and emotions). Without being vulnerable - paying the other person - there's no way you can expect the other person to respond in same, and the relationship ultimately ends. So yes, you very much do still have an 'economic exchange' - nobody emotionally stable can effectively be vulnerable with everyone, it's not possible.
(Oh yeah, a fun thing... best match I got on OKCupid? While most of the matches were in the 20-30% range on relationship/friendship, only a handful stood out: my current girlfriend, and my ex wife. I'm not sure if I should intrinsically distrust my girlfriend as a result of this, but she did score (a lot) higher than my ex on lifestyle, so we're giving it a shot.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Oh yeah? Well I had the whole concept of Carbon-14 Dating wrong!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
And no, the old argument about the govt giving tax breaks for kids because they want higher child birth doesn't hold water.
People will fuck, people will have kids...and I dare say there has never been a moment in the heat of passion where the couple said, HELL, take off the rubber, if we have a kid, we'll get a tax break!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........