The title is highly misleading, a better summary would be that a typical female OkCupid user doesn't like a typical male OkCupid user. Adding this addendum makes it pretty clear that this data is far from generalizable in any meaningful way. Dating sites and apps cater to certain types of people and there aren't any real takeaways here outside of that.
As my father always said. "Son, if you can't be handsome, be handy."<p>Handy doesn't come across in dating apps, so you need to get out there and show your strengths.
So I know the meme explanation for this where women are unreasonably picky or something by nature, and that does make some sense in the context of sexed (in the sense of gendered) game theory.<p>But is it possible that modern lifestyle (diet, inactivity, etc) simply disrupts male sexual signaling more than it disrupts female sexual signaling? That would be a simpler explanation, in a way, and it seems plausible.
Maaaan, I am so happy that I live in completely different circles.<p>I do not mean to say that any guy can get a partner easily. I mean to say that I do not see any of that mutual anger and hate this article writes about.<p>Maybe because they think less in abstract "leagues" and sometimes discuss stuff like "compatibility".
Thats because men look for a pretty woman and therefore have photos/a womans looks to go on Tinder, whilst women look for connection. So the only information they have on these apps is their looks. Whilst women have no information on connection.
While having some merit, I think it's worth remembering that most dating websites have disproportionately high numbers of men. OkCupid, in this very example, has 50% more men than women on the platform (1.5 women for every man). On other platforms like Tinder, it's much more drastic with 75% of users being men (3 women for every man).<p>There's also the secondary benefits of being on the platform. It's no secret that women get far more validation, offers, and interest for being on dating platforms than men do. For women, just being on a dating platform can provide self-validation, even if there is no interest in selecting a partner at all.
I am starting to think that part of the reason we have a reproduction crisis is because both genders find the bottom 80% of the opposite gender physically unappealing.
> The data reveal an ugly truth that we all need to face. While there are several ways to capture this ugly truth, my favorite is just: <i>The typical man disgusts the typical woman</i>.<p>This is the wrong conclusion to draw from this data, given its source.<p>The right conclusion is, at best, "The typical OKCupid male user disgusts the typical OKCupid female user". Men and women use dating apps for different reasons and in different mindsets, and many refuse to use them entirely.
Attractiveness may be the wrong question. Women tend to prefer "bad boys" who may protect them better from other males. Some women also respond sexually to stressful or painful situations that they wouldn't normally seek.
Social science is pseudoscientific enough without drawing conclusions from okcupid data.<p>(fwiw the author Bryan Caplan is an economist and should know better)