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That's the idea behind bumble. AFAIK men and women rate each other similarly to Tinder (yes/no). However, when a match occurs, women have to send the first message.

This doesn't solve the gender inbalance though. This problem is much more difficult to solve, and requires further homogenization (?) of the male and female gender role.

This should be one of the more important challenges of our time. Lonelyness and sexual frustration have only negative impacts and are two accelerators for radicalization - which is a pressing concern in developed countries.




That involves women doing more work.

The reason why women tolerate the current system is that it is less work. You just apply a filter to the incoming requests.

It's much easier than having to produce requests.

That's why women's profiles say "don't just say 'hey'" and they get to respond with...

Hey.


I met a lot of great women on Bumble. I really appreciated having them do the hard work of speaking first.

Yeah, I got a few "hey"s, which just put the ball back in my court, and I'd decide whether I wanted to put for the effort of opening the conversation. It's actually a really good skill for showing that you're interested in her, by picking up on some detail of her profile. It shows that you're perceptive and have some common interest. And conversely, if she can't do better than "hey", that tells me something about her.

I like it better than the assumption that I was required to do it, as on most other dating sites/apps. That assumption is sexist, though less annoying than being bombarded with dick pics and "DTF?" openers as so many women are. Dating sites are hard for them, too.


The reality for someone like me, a very average looking guy, is then that I get zero messages. Doesn't really solve anything either.


Average looking shouldn't be a problem to most people. Just don't look for people who want to date models. Use a dating site that focuses on content and interest rather than looks. But even if you're somewhere where the initial decision has to be made based on a photo, you can make that photo interesting.

I met my wife on a dating site 13 years ago (a small, cheap one focused specifically on Christians), and although I probably had a profile with a whole supposedly-witty story about myself, the thing I remember is the photo; I used a photo from a recent vacation to Africa, with me selfie-style in front of the gate of Timbuctoo. Her first message to me included some reference to Ouagadougou, and that got the ball rolling. (Her photo was her on a sailing boat; also effective.)

Don't use a photo where you look average, use a photo where you do something interesting. That says more about you than a chiseled jaw line.


Apps like Tinder seem like they'd be looks-focused, but it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words. What you're doing in the picture says a lot about you. So does being well-groomed and choosing a picture that's well-focused and well-composed. A nice smile goes a long way.

Women aren't as looks-focused as a lot of frustrated men present them. Average is just fine, as long as your picture suggests somebody that they can engage with. "Below average" can also go a long way if you've chosen a picture that makes you look like what she wants, which might be "fun" or "family" or "kind". The men who think it's all about their looks are most likely the ones who only judge women by theirs. And while some women do that, the vast majority don't.


Do you have any data to back up your claims? Everything points to this not being the case.


What exactly points to that not being the case? A lot of people of average looks are happily married.


You've been off the market for 13 years and have no clue how much things have changed.


That's entirely possible, but at the same time, I don't think the nature of people themselves changes so fundamentally. Culture and customs change, but not everybody wants to go along with that.


I'm also an average looking guy but got successful from learning pickup IRL.


Given how most men just swipe right 100% of the time to find the women who swiped right on them, I’m surprised there isn’t a dating app that has just admitted to this and made the matching unilateral: men would be assumed to be okay with matching any woman, whereas women would have to swipe right on a dude to “match.” Then either party could contact. It’s sort of like Bumble’s attitude, just moved one step forward in the process.


> "men would be assumed to be okay with matching any woman"

That assumption might be correct for some men, but certainly not for all, and I would expect not even for most.

In any case, requiring men to swipe right first doesn't hurt the process in any way. And requiring both sides to agree to contact makes a lot of sense.


No, not for all; but it’s an assumption, it doesn’t have to be true. Bumble itself assumes that women will ever bother to make the first move, even though most women won’t. That assumption just means that Bumble draws in an audience of the people who fit that assumption, and pushes away the people who don’t. It’s serving a niche more particular than “everybody.” If you’re a woman with social anxiety who just wishes someone would help you get over your mental block around striking up a conversation? Bumble might not be for you.

(But, to be clear, this assumption isn’t that men are okay with dating any woman interested in them; allowing-to-message doesn’t imply interest. The real assumption here is that, while the average woman sees a spammed message of interest as an annoying bit of desperation, the average man will see that same message as an esteem-boost (“hey, someone actually contacted me on this website!”) even if they are just as unlikely to engage with it. In other words, the assumption is that men are more okay with receiving spam from women, than women are okay with receiving spam from men; and so that a site that favours men receiving spam from women will have less churn than a website that favours women receiving spam.)

> requiring men to swipe right first doesn’t hurt the process in any way

I see you’ve never actually tried to enact a “swipe right 100% of the time” policy: it’s tiring, and also, apps have daily limits on how many likes you can give, precisely because this forces this rote “engagement” with the app to turn into a daily return to the app to continue swiping.

There are actually other apps, built to directly submit batched “like” API calls to these app’s backends, in order to avoid doing what is basically “work” every day (just in order to allow people who have already expressed interest in you to send an initial message to you!) And these services do everything they can to kill these auto-like apps, because they want to make men go through this pointless work, because it “fosters engagement” (i.e. makes their DAUs look better, and increases the chances someone will get fed up with running out of likes—because it turned out nobody in this batch had already seen+swiped right on them—and so pay for Gold to be able to continue swiping right.)

I guess, if you’re speaking in a game-theoretic sense, then yes, the same equilibrium state is achieved either way, because men are willing to go through a lot of pointless “work” to meet women. (You could probably build a Tinder-like app where men have to solve a CAPTCHA every time they swipe right, and use this to power a botnet.) But in an economic sense, you’re introducing a lot of inefficiency; these men could be doing other stuff with their time. (And women would prefer they do; what’s less interesting than a guy who spends all his time trying to hook up?)

> Requiring both sides to agree to contact makes a lot of sense.

No, allowing either side a choice to first have to verify the other side before they can make contact, makes a lot of sense. Requiring it is just a dark pattern. Even Facebook has the option to allow others to “reach out to you” with a message when you haven’t added them yet. It’s an option; you can disable it; but it’s on by default, and not that many people disable it.

Isn’t it weird that the current popular model for online dating is more paternalistic (“you can’t have a default-allow policy even if you want it”) than our current model for regular social networking?


> "It’s serving a niche more particular than “everybody.”"

That may be a good thing. Different people prefer different ways of dating, so expecting one way to suit everybody may be unreasonable.

> "The real assumption here is that, while the average woman sees a spammed message of interest as an annoying bit of desperation, the average man will see that same message as an esteem-boost (“hey, someone actually contacted me on this website!”) even if they are just as unlikely to engage with it. In other words, the assumption is that men are more okay with receiving spam from women, than women are okay with receiving spam from men; and so that a site that favours men receiving spam from women will have less churn than a website that favours women receiving spam."

I would expect that's strongly influenced by how new that spam is to you. For plenty of women, the first time a man expresses interest may also be a self-esteem boost. It's just that after 50 times, it gets a bit tired. A system that turns this around so men get all the spam may be interesting and new to men, but I would expect that when they get that kind of spam as much as women do on other systems, many men may also get tired of it eventually.

> "No, allowing either side a choice to first have to verify the other side before they can make contact, makes a lot of sense."

I agree that making this configurable probably makes more sense than enforcing one specific type of behaviour. It's certainly something I'd generally prefer.

On the other hand, men who just want to contact everybody who expresses an interest in them and only start considering whether they are actually interested in the other party after that contact has been established, may still end up wasting a lot of people's time. So in that sense I can still understand if a site doesn't allow it. Which dating site you choose to use will always be a user option.


Bumble's rule is that Men are not even allowed to initiate contact. This is gender-based. Given everything else happening in the world around gender discrimination, I find it interesting that a discussion around Bumble's practises has not come up. Maybe it's because as humans we are not always internally consistent with how we apply our logic to the world.


Context matters. People concerned about gender discrimination aren't usually as concerned about distinctions drawn between genders when the context is ballroom dancing or weddings. They're almost always concerned when the context is employment. Somewhere in between you've got dating and religious rules.


A good point regarding context.

Gender-equality has been coming into religion (i.e. women bishops in the Church of England) and dating (i.e. splitting checks). Given the way things are trending, it feels like this will continue to the point that it will impact things such as ballroom dancing and weddings.


I love Bumble's concept because it attempts to complete what feminism espouses. Aren't we all about empowering women, and how we can all be capable in the jobs we do, and the lives we lead? It's a great thing and I believe in it.

But... Women collectively stopped short of picking up an equal responsibility for initiating romantic or casual interest. As a guy, you are absolutely expected to make the first moves. That doesn't sound very fair to me.

(Don't say it's because women aren't as interested as men. We're all pretty horny on average, and we all want to make connections. Equality, remember?)


I agree with people being empowered regardless of gender.

However...imagine an app where only men could contact women. I feel like certain groups would be outraged....what do you think?


A big difference is that that app would double down on a specific gender-based inequality in dating, whereas an app that turns it around, subverts that traditional gender-based inequality. That is less sexist, and might indeed be more effective because of it. It forces women to take a more active role in dating when in traditional society, they're often expected to take a passive role.

So it doesn't confirm the sexism, it addresses and counters it.

If at some point in the future, it becomes expected that men take a passive role while women always take initiative, then your imagined app would be better because it would subvert that sexist expectation. It's all about context.

Ideally of course we should end up somewhere in the middle, where men and women are equal partners in the dating arena.


Nobody would be outraged because the app would fail and nobody would be using or talking about it. We’re only talking about Bumble because their approach works in some sense.


Are you trying to say that there's a responsibility for women to hit on you in order for feminism to not "stop short"?


Nobody owes me anything; but (single, lonely, would-really-like-a-partner) women might have a responsibility to strike up a conversation with somebody, somewhere, some of the time. Like a “good deed for the day” sort of thing, but a “fearless attempt to satisfy one’s own desires of-the-day” sort of thing. (Sort of in the mould of Rejection Therapy?)

Though I would say, since a lot of the reason women don’t seem to hit on men comes down to inculcated social anxiety from being raised to view strangers as unpredictable scary people who can only mean harm (a view which sticks around even in adulthood, long after it’s “helpful”; a view that boys seem to get along just fine never being burdened with), maybe the real responsibility here is on parents to... not do that. If that’s the case, I don’t know what to suggest for the generations of women that exist right now and have already been screwed up by being raised this way. (What do you do for the adults who were victims of foot-binding as children? Their feet just are that way now. And these women’s brains just are this way now, too.)


there's a phrase I use to remind myself of reality when I go down these thought paths:

>Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

Remind yourself the demographics who overwhelmingly commit violent crimes, especially domestic abuse, when considering relationship dynamics. Eliminating violent domestic abuse by men would help bring equity this situation.


Simple counterarguments: gay and lesbian culture.

If fear of romantic socializing were something correctly calibrated by knowledge of violent tendencies of your potential partners, then gay men would be just as afraid of asking other men out as women are—because, of course, there's the same probability of a male stranger to turn out to be a homicidal maniac, whether you're a man or a woman asking out that male stranger.

But gay men are not afraid of approaching other men—in fact, they approach one-another quite successfully, usually very quickly after first deciding they're attracted to someone. And gay men aren't all suddenly dying in ditches from all the homicidal maniacs they run into.

Meanwhile, lesbian women are just as socially-anxious about approaching other women, as straight women are about approaching men. One of the "universal experiences" of lesbian culture is feeling mutual attraction with someone, but neither of you working up the nerve to ask the other out, sometimes for years.

Seems less like this is any rational reaction to any properties of the romantic target, and more just a property of the subject.


I see you're making a lot of sweeping generalizations about groups of people. Could you provide any evidence?


I don't understand the inconsistency, are you saying that Bumble discriminates against men somehow? The issue for the people I've talked to is the underlying asymmetry in dating that leads to Bumble, not Bumble itself.

Edit: essentially I don't understand how men are getting hurt by Bumble, I know a lot of people that prefer it to something like Tinder so maybe that skews my perspective.


I feel like in Western society, a certain narrative is being pushed that everyone should be treated equally regardless of gender (i.e. Wimbledon winners should get paid the same amount). From what I can tell, it is selectively being used by certain groups when it suits them to push their agenda.

However when observing the real world, it is clear that people are not treated equally based on gender (i.e. Bumble, restrooms, changing rooms, dating). And I am fine with that to a certain extent which is another rabbit hole/discussion. What I find interesting, is that the generation using Bumble tend to be more progressive and aligned with the "all people are equal regardless of gender" ideology yet this is not consistent with how the Bumble app works. This is where I find inconsistency in terms of thinking but I recognize that I'm making wide generalizations which is not ideal.


I think to understand your argument I would need to understand how you think Bumble is harming men. In my experience people generally care much more about situations where there is harm in the discrimination (there are so many better targets for energy is a waste). As someone who cares a lot about gender issues Bumble is a symptom of the problem but not problematic itself, why should I care?

Edit: you are talking about a whole generation but the people who are vocal about things like Bumble are a very very small minority and not really indicative of the movement at large in my experience.


I never said it is harming men. I just said that the rules are gender-based. What made you think that?

I find it an interesting thought exercise to understand why society apply rules differently in certain situations. Context certainly plays an important role here and I feel like you made a good point around harm.

EDIT I feel like sometimes this is a sensitive topic to discuss broadly within Western society. From my end, I want to break things down to first principals and have a frank discussion. However I feel like certain elements within society would shoot down these kind of discussions since it threatens their ideology which is akin to a religion which cannot be questioned. I feel like I am going to get downvoted for saying this and I'm already negative on my karma for my other comments today...


To me I've always run in liberal circles do it feels like your assumptions of the philosophy are off in my experience. I've met very few of those sorts of fundamentalists (literally only 2 ever), most people are more into dismantling the systematic forms of oppression and therefore prioritize things that actually harm people.


I feel like I was making an observation rather than outlining a philosophy. Secondly, I feel that my observations are not quite aligned with the liberal status quo so that may be why they are "off" in your experience. I also agree that most liberals are reasonable people and there are only a few outliers.

The fact that you thought that I said Bumble was harming men and the way you identified my thoughts as a 'philosophy' as opposed to an observation to me speaks directly to point I was making in my previous post albeit you come across as someone who listens and is reasonable.


“Man” and “woman” are role scripts, i.e. requests to be treated differently in traditions that have those gendered role-slots (e.g. chivalry, weddings, etc.), which society goes along with.

Society is fully willing to dispose of the scripts if you dispose of the gender identity. Just call yourself nonbinary and cultivate an androgynous appearance, and most of (the more cosmopolitan parts of) Western society—including the dating parts!—will literally stop caring about your gender.

(Come to think, I’ve never seen a 100% enby dating app. You could make one where—like France with religion—having a legible gender-presentation would be against the rules!)


> Society is fully willing to dispose of the scripts if you dispose of the gender identity

Why is disposing of said "scripts" a good thing, especially to the extent that they are at least in part shaped by biological pre-dispositions?

> cultivate an androgynous appearance, and most of... Wester society... will literally stop caring about your gender

First, why would I need or want to "cultivate" an androgynous appearance? I'm not necessarily that handsome, but I am very distinguishably masculine. Why would I need or want to obscure natural characteristics? You are also greatly over-estimating the number of people, even in "cosmopolitan" parts of society, which would ignore gender. The population of transsexuals, homosexuals, etc. is still very small in relation to the broader population, and most people have definite ideas of who they are romantically interested in. They will not simply "stop caring".

> like france with religion

France does not allow religion on dating apps? That seems like a very silly rule, as it is an excellent predictor of shared values.


> France does not allow religion on dating apps? That seems like a very silly rule, as it is an excellent predictor of shared values.

I was talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_law_on_secularity_and_c... (though I didn't realize until looking it up just now that it was only "in schools"; I was under the impression that it was in all public spaces.)


Bumble was founded because online dating is broken to a degree. Of course they're going to go to extreme measures to attempt to solve it.


Nature gender discriminates, there’s only so much people can do to fight it without also restricting freedoms. Nature would say the top males get all the females, but that doesn’t lead to very stable, productive societies.




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