I'll use myself as an example: I'm a software engineer (big surprise on this site!), so I don't have any female coworkers who are eligible, I'm not a college student any more, I'm not religious so I don't go to church, I'm not a drinker so hanging out in bars isn't really fun for me, and I don't have any friends left who have single female friends to introduce me to. So that leaves me with things like 1) hobby/social groups on Meetup.com, 2) hanging out in coffee shops, 3) going to bars even though I don't drink and don't like the atmosphere, and 4) online dating. FWIW, I've been doing #1 (I've tried #2 but it has such a terrible success rate in actually meeting anyone I gave up; you'd have to spend a LOT of time to meet just a few people, unless you're in your 20s and in a real hot-spot for this kind of thing, like on a college campus), and not experienced any success there at all: I go to hiking meetup, but it seems most of the women who attend these in this area (and there's a lot, sometimes a 3-1 ratio F:M!) are retirement-age. Sorry, I'm not into dating women old enough to be my mother.

Online dating exposes you to people you would never meet in real life; that's why people do it. There's just no way around it. You can talk all you want about how it's better to meet people in person, but our society simply does not have many venues for this any more. In the old days, people met through friends, family, and church. These days, people like us are non-religious, we've moved away from our hometowns and move periodically for work so we don't have many friends to put us in contact with possible partners and family lives too far away. Online dating also lets you filter people out easier: I can look through someone's profile in less than 60 seconds and determine she's not someone I'd be interested in dating for various reasons (religious, extreme or conservative political opinions, etc.), things which aren't immediately obvious if you just walk up to someone in a bar and start chatting, and which may take a long time to find out through normal conversation.

Before I was married, I found dates online all the time. 99% of the women I dated had issues or were too picky. I didn't end up finding my wife until I joined some local meetup groups and met her IRL.

I went to a ton of meetups and group events in real life over the course of three years (and to a lesser extent for years before that), met a lot of women through that, but very few of them were either not in a relationship or emotionally available at the time (either too focused on their career, in an 'it's complicated' situation, going through crap with family, not very financially stable, waiting for their unicorn and would accept nothing less, etc). Many of these women I never saw with anyone or spoke about being with anyone over the course of many years in successive meetups.

To be fair, I was in a similar situation through a good chunk of my 20s when I was either working my butt off for startups or completely broke, so I understand.

But online dating was much less frustrating for me.

Also, anecdotally I believe men far outnumber women on these sites so that clearly skews the ratio in women's favor which means by law of supply and demand women choose on these sites and not men in most cases. I've gone on dates with women I met online and many of them told me it was not uncommon for them to receive hundreds of messages a day and here we have a brilliant PhD student happy with 20. Just sayin

I never used matches. I assume this is some variation on the "like" or "swipe-right" system. Women get bombarded with these. Conversely, women don't a high ratio of high quality messages.

I maybe looked at the compatibility score if it's there (e.g. OKCupid), read through the profiles, and if there was enough to grab my interest I'd write a message that at least makes some reference to what's mentioned in their profile. I got a response 8-9/10 times. Personally I think I look average enough and don't have amazing conversation skills, I just put in the work to send thoughtful messages.

As to why the match system doesn't work, the sheer amount of noise in online dating (and over-representation of men, I think) is such that these "match" systems amount to glancing through a ton of pictures and picking the best-looking ones. Particularly since profiles are best fairly compact, and don't tell you a ton about a person at the onset. You're a complete stranger to women on these platforms, with 0 trust value to your name, and so actually having a meaningful interaction is a great way to expedite that trust. You won't get there with "hey babe", "nice pic", "nice outfit", "nice smile". I mean, maybe you can if you're one of the fortunate few to cut through the noise and get someone's interest on the strength of your "playboy" looking mug. But most likely, it's a weak approach.

EDIT: worth taking a good picture of yourself. Get a second opinion on it.

I just can't get over the thought of "well, I can't do it in real life, so let's take the easy way and throw it up on the internet and see what sticks."

The funny thing is, relying on chance to put you in the same room with the right person, let alone identify and connect with them, is really inefficient. Current dating sites notwithstanding, the internet has a huge potential to optimize this process. And yet, it just feels so wrong. You are trying to start an intimate relationship through such a clinical and impersonal interface, and the vision of someone sitting there browsing through hundreds of candidates "asynchronously" at your leisure is unsettling to me.

But seriously, isn't it just easier to.. like.. go to one of these events and meet people? You may be better off with a "I need a Plus One" kind of angle - people going to an event who want someone to go with. (I'd guess that's been done, though.)

I do see your point, and your angle, but there's just something about centreing an online dating site around real situations where people meet that doesn't chime. :)

You sign into an app to indicate you are available for a spontaneous introduction.

If two matched users are within the vicinity of one another, then each receives a notification that someone they have been matched with is nearby. If both agree, the introduction is arranged at some public space. This does away with all the stress of an actual date, plus no actual time commitment.

(Note that I'm not addressing the matching process.)

One point I didn't see or missed in the article is that for men who have no problems getting dates offline, why would they go through the huge PITA of online dating? What does that do to the pool?

You have touched on one the biggest issues with online dating, woman getting overwhelmed with matches resulting in having to be picky about things that perhaps they would be less concerned with if they met in real life.

I've read stories about how some woman have unenthusiastically swiped right on a guy based on their profile, but after meeting they ended up hitting off.

The next successful iteration of a dating app is either none at all or one that figures out how to detoxify the online dating process.

I actually think the situation is even worse with women in their early twenties (that they'd be even less likely to use a service like this). Anecdotally it seems women 28-35 are much more willing to try different methods of dating than younger ones (or are even looking to actually date in general).

It's an awful way to meet new people, especially potential partners. You (being the average male, since this is my experience) are competing to have a coffee date against a ridiculous number of above average males with someone who you've never met, who knows none of your friends and likely has very little in common with you. If you get their attention (which is a very hard thing to do) you might get one or two reply messages before you're forgotten about. If you manage to get a date it's unlikely to be someone who has all that much in common with you, it's likely to be someone looking for sex rather than an actual relationship, and they're unlikely to go on a second date with you anyway.

Honestly I haven't had a lot of luck dating in person or on line but at least I've made a lot of friends from doing stuff IRL, while dating apps leave you with absolutely nothing.

Online dating does separate the wheat from the chaff in that sense, but I still find it more frustrating because there's far more competition I have to deal with and 99% of the time there's no return. When I'm in public with someone I find attractive, there's a high likelihood I can at least strike a conversation with them. Even if nothing comes of it, I gain experience. With online dating, I just get experience updating my profile and sending messages with almost no payoff.

It definitely works for some people. My best friend met his fiance on OKCupid years ago, and I've gotten multiple dates through it in the past, so I know that it can work. Whether the online dating sphere still functions properly is a different question, considering my online dating success decreased while my situation in life drastically improved, which makes no sense to me.

I'll add that I'm not particularly bothered by any of this. As you were in your 20s, I am at a stage where the benefits of dating don't outweigh the benefits of focusing on my craft until I can reach a certain threshold.

From what I gather, dating sites are dealing with the reality that women tend to want relationships before sex and men tend to want sex. Women also face various safety concerns when going out to meet people in person that they only know via internet.

If you want a meet-and-greet site, those are some of the issues that would need to be addressed to make it fly.

In my opinion, dating sites are still extremely efficient ways of meeting people. I exclude eharmony, both from personal bias, and from the fact that they don't allow you to really search the database.

After you leave college, real life meetings become much more complicated. The bar scene is a lottery. How likely is it that you'll actually coincide in time and space with somebody who you would be happy with, and then how likely is it that you'll even get to talk to them if they are there when you're there? Grocery stores and other non-traditional meeting places, I personally avoided bothering women in, assuming there should be some neutral ground where a woman might wish to be left alone.

For me, I wanted college educated women who had opinions about politics and whose opinions I shared. I wanted women with no children, who lived within 50 miles of me and didn't smoke or do drugs, but who did drink socially, wanted children, had traveled the world some, and were not strongly religious. I wanted women who enjoyed outdoor sports such as scuba, skydiving, and rock climbing. I wanted women who didn't own small yap dogs.

Can you imagine bumping into women like this randomly? But with a dating site, it became so much easier.

I still went out on a lot of dates that were bad matches, but I definitely skewed my chances of finding somebody I could respect and have fun with by taking the random chance aspect out of the equation.

EDIT: The article doesn't actually disagree with this. It's saying that paid dating sites will lose out to unpaid. I was responding to the HN title which derides all dating sites.

On reflection, the social aspect of meeting people through friends really helps solve a lot of future relationship problems (you have things in common, some level of shared values etc).

In my view online dating is brutal for all. As a guy you are constantly swiping and sending out a lot of messages with a very low conversion rate (I'd be surprised if 1% of all swipes turn into a date). If you go on things like /r/tinder there are lots of guys who complain about being on the platform for months or years and not having a single match. As a woman you're often dealing with hundreds and hundreds of matches. Everyone has to run a massive pipeline which means things end up being very transactional if you aren't careful.

Because there's so much competition things that wouldn't necessarily matter all that much end up being huge deal breakers (say for example height, or niche preferences).

I'm off the apps, at least for the moment, and am focusing on meeting people in the real world.