JJ The PUA Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 Can you substantiate that? I've heard lots of figures, but all of the "I think... " or "I heard..." variety. So I assume they're all made up. Sort of, I used to work in the field of marketing research and have seen stats on those sites. The paid ones like e-harmony seem to have the lowest ratios like 4:1 or 6:1. A lot of guys don't want to pay to be "rejected" or are just cheap lol so the free sites have an extremely skewed male to female ratio. OKC is not too bad, I think it's about a 10:1 ratio. Face it, women don't really need to get online to find dates. All they really have to do is sit at the bar looking pretty and they will get approached often. One thing you might notice is that many of the females on these sites list that they are in very heavily female dominated fields like nursing, teaching, or social work. A lot of people make connections through their work. That's one thing I'm not into however, I'd like to put tacks on the desk chairs of more than a few people in my workplace. lol
Author oaks Posted June 17, 2011 Author Posted June 17, 2011 Sort of, I used to work in the field of marketing research and have seen stats on those sites. Ok. That's slightly better than "I heard...". Face it, women don't really need to get online to find dates. Yes, I broadly agree with the generalisation and why it's likely that there's such a huge gender imbalance on these sites (and that's just one reason), I'm just sceptical of people giving figures when there's almost nothing published about what the numbers really are. (Of course, the imbalance is probably so big that it isn't in the interests of the dating sites to publish it themselves since they want everyone to think that signing up is the way to get dates.)
Author oaks Posted June 17, 2011 Author Posted June 17, 2011 Mini-update: another date is scheduled. ... and let's just say that it involved kissing and all is good on planet Oaks.
nyc_guy2003 Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 Women just get too many messages on most of the online dating sites because of the skewed male to female ratio. On POF I think the ratio is as high as 20:1. Even an extremely unattractive female will get a lot of mail on a site like that. Someone should run an experiment and post a profile of an "extremely unattractive female" and see how many responses she actually gets. I would be really curious to know if guys are really that desperate.
GivenUp0083 Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 Stop "putting in weeks of effort". I would msg maybe 25% of the matches I got every day (eHarmony makes the first contact just a multiple choice quiz). Takes maybe 10 seconds. Then I would go through each day and move to the next "stage". Often woman would stop replying, but I never noticed because I was always msging new women each day. By the end of the summer I looked back to see who never replied and was actually surprised. I think a key to dating (at least for me), is to have options. Now, that is NOT treating each woman as disposable, but rather knowing in my heart that if this girl doesn't work out, there are other girls who might. I never got tied up in one girls in the early stages (after a few dates that obviously changed). RF I'm the same way, I never put all my eggs in one basket, especially if I haven't met them yet. I don't know where you got that impression from me, but that's not what I do, I always reached out to new girls no matter what I was getting for responses. After more thought, I'll never go back to this. It's really a bunch of garbage, online dating. I'll meet women other ways, I don't need to subject myself to this.
GivenUp0083 Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 Can you substantiate that? I've heard lots of figures, but all of the "I think... " or "I heard..." variety. So I assume they're all made up. Sort of, I used to work in the field of marketing research and have seen stats on those sites. The paid ones like e-harmony seem to have the lowest ratios like 4:1 or 6:1. A lot of guys don't want to pay to be "rejected" or are just cheap lol so the free sites have an extremely skewed male to female ratio. OKC is not too bad, I think it's about a 10:1 ratio. Face it, women don't really need to get online to find dates. All they really have to do is sit at the bar looking pretty and they will get approached often. One thing you might notice is that many of the females on these sites list that they are in very heavily female dominated fields like nursing, teaching, or social work. A lot of people make connections through their work. That's one thing I'm not into however, I'd like to put tacks on the desk chairs of more than a few people in my workplace. lol 10:1 on OKC?!?!?! Wow, I thought it was much lower, but I guess that makes sense, it is free and it's effortless to create a profile. That really does explain a lot. I had the impression that pay sites were like 3:1 so I figured the odds weren't TOO bad, but yeah, 4:1....6:1....10:1? That's ridiculous. Thank you for sharing, you've further justified my reason not to go back to that.
thatone Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 I hear the dating "odds" swing in favor of the men as you get past 30 years old. I'm 28 in Chicago. I think women here just have way too many options and I just get overlooked. I hear you on not losing anything, it just gets really annoying to try and think of a way to start a conversation with these women based on a profile, and you get nothing back after weeks of effort. Just not worth my time in my opinion just for a "chance to meet someone". I meet new people all the time in my daily life anyway. It's like running 5 miles to the grocery store downtown when there's a convenience store right around the corner, and the food is most likely going to be better than the food downtown. they do by numbers alone. a man 35 or so can be perfectly content and 'socially acceptable' for lack of a better term with any woman from 25 to his own age, or even a couple of years past. so you have a spread of about 12-14 years to choose from. in your 20s you're limited to a much smaller age range, and being still in college or recent college grads they have a plethora of options around them every day. not so when they get into the 29-35 range.
fishtaco Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 they do by numbers alone. a man 35 or so can be perfectly content and 'socially acceptable' for lack of a better term with any woman from 25 to his own age, or even a couple of years past. so you have a spread of about 12-14 years to choose from. in your 20s you're limited to a much smaller age range, and being still in college or recent college grads they have a plethora of options around them every day. not so when they get into the 29-35 range. I don't know the reason, but yes, for men 30's is their golden age. For women, 20's.
thatone Posted June 18, 2011 Posted June 18, 2011 I don't know the reason, but yes, for men 30's is their golden age. For women, 20's. reasons are pretty simple... a) you're not old yet so there are no physical/health problems, you can still do the same things you used to b) you've been working long enough you should be making better money c) you are more experienced than your younger counterparts, which results in generally better 'game' than you used to have in your 20s
daphne Posted June 18, 2011 Posted June 18, 2011 ... and let's just say that it involved kissing and all is good on planet Oaks. Shazaaaaammm! Houston we have take off.
nyc_guy2003 Posted June 18, 2011 Posted June 18, 2011 I don't know the reason, but yes, for men 30's is their golden age. For women, 20's. Very true, especially in the industry I work in. I have a lot of single guy friends in their 30s and early 40s who are constantly dating hot 20-something year old girls.
Pasttense Posted June 18, 2011 Posted June 18, 2011 Can you substantiate that? I've heard lots of figures, but all of the "I think... " or "I heard..." variety. So I assume they're all made up. Try an experiment on Plenty of Fish or your other favorite site. Do a search: I am a Male seeking a Female within ages A To B within X miles of location Y... Then replace this with I am a Female seeking a Male within the same parameters Plenty of Fish has a maximum of 600 plus responses so you need to choose parameters which will give you a smaller number (by restricting the distance and age limits, etc). Of course those of us who live in the middle of nowhere don't have this problem. Tell us what numbers you get. Anyone?
Author oaks Posted June 18, 2011 Author Posted June 18, 2011 Tell us what numbers you get. Anyone? OKC, Age 29, within 25 miles of London, online in the last month, have photo, single, white, non-smoker. 11 pages of girls who like guys. 21 pages of guys who like girls. I'll round that up to 2:1. Same search, but for age 34. I got 10 pages of guys, 6 pages of girls. I'll round that up to 2:1. Doesn't look too bad.
Author oaks Posted June 19, 2011 Author Posted June 19, 2011 and for similar searches on PoF I'm only seeing ratios between 2.5:1 and 3.5:1, although to get the search results down to less than 600 results I had to select "within 5 miles" of specific postal areas in London (eg SW1A). Those searches on PoF will include people who haven't logged in for a long time since you can't search only for recently online members like you can on OKC. I don't have time to try every combination, but for all the ones I've tried that are subsets of what I'm looking for it's nowhere near 10:1 for OKC or 20:1 for PoF and I'm going to continue to maintain healthy scepticism of those claims given the lack of published data and the counter-evidence (for my area) that I've seen myself.
Saxis Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 Update: After another 20 or so messages, I got 4 replies. A couple obviously not interested and I quit contacting, one that quit contact after the second message and one that quit contact after about 6 messages and asking for her number. Sent out a couple more today... It's looking more and more like a waste of time.
GivenUp0083 Posted July 8, 2011 Posted July 8, 2011 Update: After another 20 or so messages, I got 4 replies. A couple obviously not interested and I quit contacting, one that quit contact after the second message and one that quit contact after about 6 messages and asking for her number. Sent out a couple more today... It's looking more and more like a waste of time. Unless you have a vagina, then yes....online dating IS a big waste of time. Practice approaching strangers and making conversation. Try to be funny. Get them to smile. Practice on department store clerks and ask about the things in the store. Get used to making banter. It's a little nerve racking to start convo with random people but once you get over it, it's a lot easier and more rewarding than sending an email to someone who looks at your profile and doesn't have the decency to write back.
thatone Posted July 8, 2011 Posted July 8, 2011 update to this thread too, curious about something i tried an experiment i like to call "obvious stereotype". applying my own stereotypes of people from different regions i'm most familiar with in the US... a) the state i live in, generally unattractive people outside of the city limits (rural south, poor state). also generally uninteresting and rude people outside of the city limits for the same reason. outside of the three or four neighborhoods surrounding me in this city, i wouldn't piss on the rest of this state if it were on fire. b) i travel fairly often to another city further north due to family up there, a much larger city and i find midwestern people generally more polite and less clique'ish, and there are simply more of them when comparing the two cities. we're talking about a city of 400-500k versus a city of 3 or 4 million. now the attractive non-stupid woman in place A is a rarity, and they know they're a rarity. they don't even have to be that attractive, just non-obese and have all of their teeth. they can pick and choose to their heart's content. the redneck types outside of the city in place A have their cliques to fit into to have ANY sort of social life so they have their inbred (pun intended) fear of outsiders to hold on to. place B being a city of several million people is the opposite. no rednecks so no redneck cliques to hold on to. very little protestant religion to hold on to either. most younger people on the dating sites are transplants who have moved to the city for work, rather than moving to the city to escape the hell that is rural life in the deep south. so filtering deal breakers and looking for common interests, and just messaging people in the other city in question to see how many replies there were, i found a reply rate much higher which statistically holds up since there is a much larger pool of people there anyway. about a 50% rate of reply in the northern city, versus 25-30% here locally. now you can quantify the fact that i'm hundreds of miles away however you like, i suppose. some probably noticed that instantly others probably didn't. one thing i did notice though from the larger midwestern city was a few replies filtering in a week or two after the fact that included apologies for not replying sooner. i've never seen that in a reply from around where i live now. again falls in with the premise that midwestern people are generally more polite. so for the purposes of meeting people online, i can definitely give the advice of applying the stereotypes by region if you're considering moving to another location and the dating scene there is part of your motivation. a) people in the south are inbred redneck buffoons outside of certain cities b) people in the midwest are more polite and open in general i've been to other regions of the country but not enough time spent in any of them to judge the population as well.
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