mrjowee

Well, not that shocking, I guess. For some reason, I've been fascinated with online dating recently. I've done it before, and met some really cool people, but it's been weighing heavily on my mind after a discussion with a co-worker. He thought he wasn't getting any responses simply because there is too much competition. I was inclined to think that may just be a part of it, so I did an informal experiment to see how many men tried to contact a woman given only basic information about her.

With the permission of a female friend, I made a fake account using her pictures. It's against the PoF rules, but I figure it's not harmful since I won't be conversing with anyone, or leading anyone on, or doing any kind of sociopathic nonsense of the sort. I set the age at 24, 5' 7" tall, average body type, brown hair, blue eyes, non-smoker, looking for LTR. I uploaded three pictures that I would rank as 7/10. Not bad looking, but not extremely attractive either. I left the "About Me" section purposely ambiguous and pretty much empty ("It's making me wright something in this space" is all it says).

I so far have come away with two results from this experiment, the first being the massive number of messages I have received. The profile went public at 8pm on Thursday. It's now 4pm on Saturday, and as of writing this the profile has received a total of 70 messages. So 1.6 messages per hour, or very roughly one message every 45 minutes. I've been checking it regularly (hey, you have something better I can do while home sick?), and the number of messages has yet to slow down. It could be that PoF places some kind of priority on new accounts, perhaps bumping them to the top of a search result, increasing the likelihood of connecting with someone.

All of the men are local, and for the most part the profile pictures look to be in the appropriate age range (early 20's up to 30). I haven;t taken the time to check everyone's profile. The race of the men is what is to be expected for this area; mixed, mostly White. The content of the messages is downright embarrassing. Barely anyone has made any attempt at standing out from the crowd, the exception being two. One was an ill attempt at humor, joking about running away to elope. The other was someone who mentioned that they too didn't like filling out the profile info. The vast majority where simply "hey" or "whats up", a handful introduced themselves, and another handful complimented the pictures. Besides the two noted exceptions, none of the messages are over 10 words long. So far none have been sexual, which is in and of itself a shock.

Now, this may all have seemed pointless, and, well, I guess it kind of was! But it did offer me some insight into the other side (ie, the female perspective) of online dating websites. Also, it kept my mind off of this cold.

PayLayAle

That's the same some of the other studies done. Online dating is hellish for men.

OK Cupid: An Exploration Into Just How Low Some Guys Will Go - Mandatory

Review of Match.com by waste_of_time from Michigan

OkCupid Profile Picture 'Experiment' Reveals How Different Online Dating Is For Women vs. Men

The bottom line for me is that unless you're in the top 10% of most attractive men, you will get little or no messages and anything you do receive are from the whales and she-boons. You're also get a response rate from messages you send out of 1-2%.

Why is this? Well, men outnumber women 100:1 on these sites. In addition, a fairly attractive woman without aspergers or down syndrome can simply waltz into a bar or anywhere else and get hit on, and get laid if she so desires at any time. It's mostly the socially awkward and fugly women that have to resort to going online.

xpac

Doesn't shock me one single bit.

You didn't even have to go through the effort of making a fake POF profile to yield these results.

Go on craigslist and put an ad in men seeking women, then put a similar ad in women seeking men. For consistency do not put photos on either ad and use the same craigslist locale. And keep it simple like wanting to go to a movie.

Women seeking men will have hundreds of replies. Men seeking women will have spam bots.

Britannic Nationalist

It strikes me as very strange. As men and women are equal in number and yet there are far more men in the online dating game it really makes me wonder who the women are all with.

__________________

anthresearch

In many cases, they have decided they are too good for men (any man). Men are an annoyance according to feminists and they have decided that it is shameful to be with a man.

This is why you often see attractive Northern European women in their 30s or late 20s who are single. Not because they can't find anyobody, but simply because they want to.

This causes the top 10% of men to go for the average looking women and so the problem is passed further down to the average looking men who begin struggling.

PayLayAle

One of the reasons is that there's a type of soft-polygamy in the US. Another is that men in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s want the women in their 20s and early 30s. There's a surplus of women in their late 30s and older.

Feminism may have shifted things a bit, but biological urges are extremely powerful. How many teens engage in sex after being told they shouldn't?

anthresearch

A good looking woman of Nordic type in her late 30s and early 40s still has way more options and power than virtually any man (regardless of looks, age or status).

I think women only really lose their power when they hit menopause. If women began freezing their eggs when still fertile, however, that may change.

Sick of the Government

I pretty much assumed it was a place for one night stands. My buddy moved from the Midwest to AZ, and that's all he used it for. Easy hook ups with sketchy women, or men for that matter if you're a woman.

mrjowee

I found an article on this subject.

Comment Of The Week: Fat Chicks And Their Ludicrous Standards | Chateau Heartiste

"This is a concise and penetrating explanation of the common female frailty herein known as Absurd Standards Syndrome (ASS). Insulated by the PC media, glam mags, academia, beta suckups and female friends, women have lost touch with their rank relative to other women and are thus finding it easy to slip into a comfortable bubble of self-delusion. Similar to cigarette addiction, the quick dopamine fix... trumps the harsher acceptance of personal flaws that must be remedied by willpower and self-control (or simply accommodated) to achieve longer term and more fulfilling rewards, or to come to terms in a dignified manner with one�s diminution of mate choice."



I must be doing something right. My response rate is 12%. Adjust that for profiles that have been abandoned and it's sure to be higher.

PayLayAle

The author of that site is somewhat of a WN and talks a little about white genocide in some of his posts.