HealthyGamerGG - Why Your Tinder Match Isn't Going To Date You

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

Dr. K talks about the outcomes of dating apps and why people actually use them. He dives into how the premise of these apps are inverse and talks about some studies to do with relationships! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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dating apps have this assumption that the crap that you put into your profile has some impact on whether you wind up in a relationship or not. Advice discussion after Dr. Kay's talk on dating apps. So, hey, community, I 22M am a longtime lurker of this community. After hearing Dr. Kay, hey, thank you for coming out of the lurking and posting and contributing. We appreciate it. After hearing Dr. Kay's talk on dating apps, I wanted to talk about some nuances that I felt he didn't. touch on. First of all, I agree that communication skill and dating just in every part of life is one of the most important skills to work on, and that is not looked at enough. My main gripe is that online dating

for, I feel like a lot of men, doesn't even get to the communication part. I average one to three local non-bought or non-instagram Snapchat only fans farming matches in the first month after creating a profile. After these few weeks, I average zero matches and have to create a new profile. To Dr. K, these apps have a big problem with men-to-women ratio and how the algorithm tanks visibility of your profile. Because of this, women can cherry-pick profiles and don't participate much in chatting and planning casual meetups or dates. Women using their profiles to boost other online social media followers or only fan subscriptions

is also a huge but different problem. Of course, I know not all women do this. I just want to point out my experience on these apps for years. Also, you can put filters on distance to other profiles. I didn't understand why Dr. K. about this being a huge issue specifically for online dating. So Dr. Trakashio's research that the way we fill in a profile does not matter. Within my many years on the dating apps, I agree. I get the same amount of matches with different types of profiles. No slash funny earnest bios, bios,

mentioning hobbies, bios mentioning physical attributes, few lots of pictures, goofy, selfie, group pictures. I've tried different types of swiping methods, liking all profiles, only liking profiles with bios, with pictures, with people that I find attractive. Again, no change in the amount of matches. Now when I succeed to go on a date, which happens about once or twice a year pre-COVID, I mostly find it a fun time. I could describe myself as an introvert who likes to socialize. With every date so far, the other person always kindly declines a second date. I then asked on different occasions what they thought of me to get a better understanding why. They respond that I was kind and respectful that I was fun to have a chat with, but they

weren't interested to go further and that they say they weren't ready yet to genuinely date someone. I very much respect that. I wouldn't want them to feel forced to go on more dates if they don't want to. Now to get back on the topic, I also hear I'm fun, kind, respectful, calm communicator. So do I just need to go on more dates to eventually find someone who does not want to date me more than once? But with the pace I have matches and eventually dates, it can take years. I'm really a loss. Okay? So we're going to, they offer more contact. text, but we're going to kind of pause here for a second. So here's the central point that I was trying to make. Actually, let's start with this. Let's start with a couple of observations.

The first is what is the outcome that the dating profiles are, the dating apps are looking for. You can even hear it, right, in this person's thing. What is the outcome that they're measuring? What's the outcome that they're trying to detect? They're detecting the outcome that they're looking at is matches, right? Everything about this is, nope, people are saying dates, engagement, nope, incorrect. It's matches. It doesn't, my profile doesn't affect matches. These are the matches that I get.

Matches, matches, matches, matches. So the first thing that's happened is dating profiles have shifted the target on us without us even realizing it. It happened so quickly and so rapidly that we completely lost track of it. And now everyone's looking at matches. What was the original goal of a dating app? What was the goal of a dating app? The premise of the original dating apps and the premise of dating apps still is this. There are a million people out there.

One of them or some of them are right for you. By using all of these filters ahead of time, we can find the right person. person for you. Their general argument was that if you go and date for 10 years, you may never find the right person because you're going to waste all this time going through people who are incorrect only to find the one who's correct. And so by measuring all these things, by building a profile and by matching you, we can accelerate that process. You will find a relationship or love faster than you would in the real world. Due to our matching algorithms,

you will need to go through fewer people to find the right one. Do you all get this? This is the general premise. What has actually happened in dating apps? The exact opposite. How many people do you go through now to find the right one?

It's escalated enormously. You know, people would date, what, 10 people, 20 people, 30 people before getting married? Like, who knows what the average is? this is well like we have to do a ton of research on this okay how many people do you go through now way more so the fundamental premise of the dating app is actually like inverse the promise that they give you and what they deliver is like the exact opposite it's like getting a job where every

hour that you work you pay them money instead of you getting money they're like hey our system will make it easier for you to you will have to go through fewer people because we're going to pre-select we're going to look at like your religion and we're going to look at your race and we're going to look at your goals whether you have kids or not as we check all these boxes you will have to go through fewer people the alternative is you have to go and meet other people and you have to talk to them and you have to go on four dates to figure out if they have kids we're going to simplify that process by doing it from the get-go and the result that they create is not that you have to go through fewer people you have to go through more way more astronomically more So here's the first thing to understand.

This is what I was trying to say. Dating apps have this assumption that the crap that you put into your profile has some impact on whether you wind up in a relationship or not. And where does that assumption come from? It's because you can only put particular crap into the dating profile. Right? There's like, I don't know how to say this, but you can put your race, you can put your ethnicity, you can put whatever. like you can put pictures, and we assume that those things correlate with finding a successful relationship.

It turns out that those are not the things that correlate with a successful relationship. Let's look at some science. The measurement of perceived relationship quality components, a confirmatory factor analytic approach. This is what correlates with success in a relationship. This is the kind of crap, satisfaction, commitment, intimacy, trust, passion, love. This is factor analysis. There's a lot of science behind this crap.

This does not, this chart, Model 1, single factor, model 2, six uncorrelated factors. This chart does not go into your dating profile. If you want to understand how to make predictions about matching with someone properly in terms of forming a relationship, this is the level that you have to operate at.

Right? This is not the actual information that it takes. Predictors of romantic relationship formation, attachment style, prior relationships, dating goals. So now we're getting a little bit closer, right? Maybe dating goals like does the transition from not dating to casual dating or committed dating was mainly predicted by prior dating success with some support for a potential role for the additional role of the desire to form a committed relationship. So the transition from not dating to casual committed dating was mainly predicted by

prior dating success. Let me ask you a question. When you fill out an app, when you make a profile in an app, does it ask you how successful you are in dating? Does it show other app, as part of someone else's profile, does it show you how successful they are at dating? Because that's what's actually like scientifically correlated with it. Right? There's also things like attachment style. Does it show you what the attachment style is? Because it turns out that attachment avoidance, but not anxiety, was predictive of not entering into a committed relationship even with rival predictors included. So if you're looking for a relationship, do you get to see whether the other person has anxious avoid an attachment, anxious attachment or avoid an attachment? Because this is actually what predicts relationships.

No, what they show you is what they can collect. And somewhere along the way, based on what they can collect is what we start. It's sort of like, we can't measure what's in your bank account, but we can measure the size of the wheels on your car. So in order to determine whether you are a good candidate for a loan, we're going to measure the size of the wheels on your car because we don't know how much money is in your bank account. It's idiotic. We are starting to form predictions on relationships with what we can measure, even though what we can measure or what we can display doesn't actually correlate with what succeeds in a relationship. And so let me ask you something. If you design a system in which what you measure and what you display has no correlation in a relationship,

relationship, what impact do you think it would have on people's success at finding relationships? You would assume that it has no impact. And what was the original premise of dating apps? It was, hey, if you filter all this crap ahead of time, we'll make it easier on you. You don't have to date 20 or 30 people. You don't have to talk to 20 or 30 people. We'll help you get there faster. And instead, what we see is the opposite effect.

Now you have to talk to 300 people, 400 people, 500 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, 15 people. It's almost as if their system is worse than like the baseline. And we wonder, why is dating so hard now? It's because the system is actually designed to produce a completely different result. I don't know what to say. Like, the system sucks. And we have data to support that the system sucks. The promise that the foundation that these apps were built on is creating the opposite effect. If we pre-filter, if you tell us, whether you want to have kids, whether you like hiking or not, and how you spend your time, people will be able to see that, and the people who are interested in that kind of thing

will be able to select you. Ergo, you will have fewer rejections, right? We're going to only find the people who like the stuff that you do, and we're going to match you together. But now you get more rejections. And this doesn't even start to include, like, the crap from the bots and the only fans and social media kind of crap. Right?

I didn't even touch that. So dating apps, and this is where they tricked us. Because then what they did is they stopped looking at relationships. What they looked at was matches. And even if you go back to that post, you could rewind and find it again. Matches, matches, matches, matches. They changed the instrument of measurement to something that when we signed up for the dating app, we weren't trying to maximize our matches.

We were trying to maximize our relationships. And they switched what they measure on us. It's like, oh, no, no, we don't care about the money in your bank account. We're going to measure tire. Tire size. Tire size is what we're going on now. And then everyone started doing it because that's what they can control. That's what they can influence.

That's what their measurements can allow us to do is match. But that's not the same thing as a relationship. Somewhere along the way, we sort of assumed that more matches leads to more or better relationships. Y'all get that? So this is the fundamental problem with dating apps is that the reason that we use them and the promise that we're sort of given on a fundamental level does not actually,

they don't do what we use them to do because they can't do that. And so like this has happened so quickly and so rapidly that like we've been all taken by surprise. Does that make sense? We're actually like, it's harder to date. We get rejected by more people. We actually have to look through more people.

people. And so then one of the interesting questions, and then why the hell does anyone use it? This is really fascinating. So I'm going to give you all kind of, the reason we use it is because it's simple. The cost of using an app for one minute and the availability of using an app for one minute is incredibly low. The cost of using an app over the course of one year or two years is way higher. And so the apps are, what they do is like if you think about how to meet someone, if you want to find someone, there's a very high upfront cost investment for a particular day. I got to shower, I got to shave, I got to make social plans, I got to go to this party, I'm going to meet some people there.

So it's like four to five hours of prep for like one opportunity of a questionable result. Whereas like, I can be taken a dump this morning and be swiping on Tinder. And for five minutes, I can swipe and look through profiles. So they make the accessibility of like the illusion of progress. So the illusion of progress is so accessible that like we just do it very easily. It's sort of like, you know, if you look at a slot machine, like slot machines have terrible odds. Why the hell do people play slot machines?

Because all it takes to play a slot machine is to pull a lever. The upfront cost is so low to engage in this low probability of success behavior that people keep doing it. And then the other thing that slot machines figured out is we can add do-da-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. It's not like a slot machine has an RNG random number generate. Boom, lose. Boom, lose.

Boom, lose. Boom, lose. And what did the dating apps do? You got a notification. You got a match. It's pulsing. It's designed just like a slot machine. Right?

So that's why we use them. Because the dating app came along and say, hey, if you want to like try to go meet someone, who the hell knows whether you will or not, you're going to have to shower, you're going to have to shave. You're going to have to shave your legs. You're going to have to get in your dress.

You've got to put on makeup. And then, like, you may meet someone who's a complete idiot. Could be a complete waste of your time. But while you're in your slippies and you haven't shaved or washed any part of your body in 72 hours, we can help you get one step closer. And that's it. In a nutshell. What's the deal with dating apps? That's it.

Questions. Yeah, Spencer 444 is saying, not even a lever. Just press a button. 100%. So XX Rocks 7 is asking how do we test for compatibility? This. This is how you test for compatibility. Look at it.

This is what you got to do. This paper I'm sort of misrepresenting in some ways, but I picked it purposefully because of its complexity. But this is how you test for it. So there may be matching out there. The problem is that like the matching, this is the other like big thing that people don't realize is that there's an assumption in dating apps that your subjective impression is going to correlate with some amount of success. You all get that? Like, they assume that you know what you want or you know that your preferences will actually,

like, your subjective preferences will actually be what you're looking for. Right? So, like, just to give you all an example, you know, there's this kind of common perception that men will date women like their moms and women will date men like their dads. So, like, even if we assume that's true for. a moment, when you're filling out a dating profile, that's what your actual preferences. Let's just assume that's true for a moment. We're not saying it is.

Does the dating profile let you select for that in any way, in your mind? Of course not. Right? So there's all kinds of stuff that we may be able to actually select things for, which is cool. But like, there's an assumption that we know what those are subjectively. Whereas if you look at things like attachment, so if we know that, for example, attachment style correlates with like dating compatibility, and there's an assumption that a human being

knows what their attachment style is, which is chances are we don't. So the other problem with a lot of this research is when we look at what correlates with success in dating, this is stuff that people usually don't know about themselves. So the fact that I'm the one that's creating it as opposed to a psychologist who's doing a personality analysis and doing some kind of like matching system there,

which if you all remember, we looked at that management paper about like red flags and interviews, that's where it becomes kind of interesting. Like, that's what the resolution of data you may need. And there's also an assumption that you subjectively know what you're looking for. So it's interesting because if you look at other matchmaking services historically, you'd have a matchmaker, right? And you kind of tell them what you want, what you want.

But a matchmaker will, like, look at you and recognize particular things about your personality and recognize what kind of thing will actually be compatible for you. And so that's the presumptuant. of a matchmaker. The matchmaker also makes a claim of a value ad, that if you actually literally pay me money, I will help you find a good relationship. Indian matchmaking on Netflix is excellent, by the way. Love it. If you guys are interested in that, it's cool. Questions? Indian matchmaking. Do you think dating apps have any positives? 100%. So the key thing to remember about dating apps is what they actually offer and what they deliver.

And if you want to engage in that, they're great. So, for example, they're a great way to recruit for social media, get cash from people, or get subscriptions on only fans. They're fantastic for that, right? That's why I think that so many people do that kind of crap. They're great for bots that are looking to connect with people and maybe fishing scams. Right? They're good for that, too.

They may be great for things like, you know, you just have to remember. what they're good for, which is like they may be great for potentially hookups or things like that. They're great for like starting conversations and connecting you with people that you would otherwise never meet. Right. So like that's actually really cool about dating apps. It's like they they will connect potential people that in the normal course of their social interactions would never encounter each other.

And those people could be very compatible. It's just like, you know, if I go to church all the time and like I would never get the chance to meet someone who like goes to mosque all the time. right like I may just never run across them so I think there's a lot of good stuff that they're for I think the challenge is that they claim to be good at we use them looking for a particular thing and it doesn't give us that thing and then we get really frustrated by it because we had this assumption that they were good for that particular thing so it's not that they're bad it's just what do they offer what do they promise and what do they deliver and when you use it what are you looking for

right so like they're also good for other things which is that i can start to do some kind of relationship building in my jammies not having showered in two days they're fantastic for that great love recklessly is saying the people i've dated from dating apps who i already knew from my past but we never considered dating that's actually a very not very common but that's something that i hear is actually really good where people will like connect many years later and they'll like they'll actually end up having a healthy relationship and they're like hey did i like i had a crush on you in the seventh grade and it's like 10 years later. The other person's like, oh, like, I had a crush on you too. And then you're like, lull, want to get together,

want to screw DTF? And they're like, yeah, right? They're also good because they allow like a lot of people who do have things like social anxiety to start to form relationships. So sometimes it's a lot more comfortable for people like, you know, so there's a lot of, a lot of good stuff there. So Dallas JSC is saying, my family states they want me to be with a girl who is a 10 out of 10 on the scale of attraction and my last two X's apparently didn't reach that bar. How do I avoid their influence on my relationships? You can't avoid their influence on your relationships.

You have to acknowledge it and counter it. Right. So this is where like a lot of people are looking for a solution of avoidance. How do I avoid thinking particular thoughts? Like your family's influence is going to be there. Right? So what you've got to do is like counter it. You know, very practically you can sort of ask.

them, why does, like, what is the foundation of, like, a healthy relationship in your mind? What is, what are the advantages of a 10 out of 10? Like, what's the priority list? Who determines 10 out of 10? You can talk to them about all that stuff. And you can also ask your family, like, if I'm happy with someone who's like a 7 out of 10, like, what would you all think about that? How would, what's wrong with that? And that's where they'll probably say things like, well, it reflects poorly on us. I see. So the goal of my relationship is how it affects you. That's your priority in terms of who I date, which is how it makes you look. Thanks for sharing that. Now I understand what's important to you.

Would you be surprised if my primary goal in a relationship is not how it reflects on you socially? What do you think about that? And that's where they're going to get real squirrely, and they're not going to want to say those things. And the way that you talk to them is going to be open-ended questions and non-judgmentalness, and that's when you'll sort of get all these weird impressions. Inkbringer's asking my friend's boyfriend is hated by her family for supposedly not being good enough for her and it's super toxic. Why can't family mind their business? They are minding their business. Their family is their business, right? Think about it for a second. More practically, you can set limits with them. And the other really crazy thing here is like, I know

it's shocking. Sometimes, I'm not saying this sarcastic. Honestly, sometimes, sometimes, when your family is concerned about the person that you're dating, they may know better than you do. Right? Sometimes they may know better. We just don't consider that possibility at all. It's inconceivable that the person that I have chosen to date, I could be making some kind of mistake.

It's inconceivable that my family knows me better than I do. It's inconceivable that my parents who have watched me grow, understand what my weaknesses are. It's inconceivable that my parents, who have more experience at marriage than I do, understand what it takes to form a successful, healthy long-term relationship more than I do. And they're making a calculated guess

and the conclusion that they come to is different from my own. There's just this assumption that your family is wrong in that situation. Whereas if we really think about it, right now, it's kind of weird, we really think about it, like, they may actually know better than we do.

Now, that has to be balanced a little bit because sometimes there's the presumption that since they have more experience, they know more than we do. And they do know better. Going back to the other person who's like, you need a 10 out of 10. So there's like some balance there where it's like they may know some things that we don't. They may be aware of some of our weaknesses. And also they may have a set of priorities that we actually don't care about. So that's where like it's not like one is right or the other is right.

It's just we have to be really self-reflective and hopefully communicate with them about what their concerns are and try to like, learn from their mistakes so that we don't have to make them. And at the same time, like, establish our own priorities from a calm centered place where we can sort of like set limits with our family. It's tricky. But there's kind of this assumption that I know what I need for a successful relationship. Whereas if you like really look at it, like that, that's not an assumption that we necessarily know is true. You all get that? Like sometimes, like, we're really bad at picking romantic partners. That's why that's why. That's why. That's why. the divorce. Like, if we were so good at picking romantic partners, I don't know that the divorce rate

would be like 40 to 50%. Yeah, Rag. AZ is asking signs a relationship is beyond repair. One very simple sign that your relationship is unsalvageable and is beyond repair. And that's, you're the only one who's trying to repair it. Most fundamental thing that is required for relationships to be repaired is the effort of both of the people involved, or more if you're in an open relationship. That's the most consistent thing that I would say. A relationship cannot be salvaged by one person. So Rameen RV is asking, how about when your parents want you to marry

within your culture, religion will disown you if you don't? That's where you have to decide what's more important to you. You're a family disowning you or like adhering to them and not being disown. Like what's higher in the priority list for you? Disowning by your family

or being with the person that you're with? This is the other thing. So a lot of people who are faced with this scenario have a very short sense of time. People think disowning is forever. Whereas I've seen this a lot where like if you're 24, disowning feels like a long time, your parents are like, we're going to disown you. And then like if you do it, five years later, like you may be surprised at how much people are willing to come to the table.

Like when you have grandkids and they're like, you know, sometimes people will like mend those fences. Sometimes the threat of disowning is like, like, you know, stuff doesn't last forever. And sometimes it does. I'm not saying it's always going to be like that. Sometimes they disown you and it's like, screw them. And sometimes you don't want to repair things. But there's this presumption that if you disown someone, you disown them forever. Whereas like, honestly, in my experience, especially when we've got these like cultural, like,

these strong cultural values, right? Family is important. Families, important. Family is important. You marry someone. You're like, all right, you can disown me. And then, like, y'all may come to a new dynamic. equilibrium where you've like set a particular boundary and they like call your bluff and you call

their bluff and then a few years later you're like well we kind of miss each other and we kind of love each other and like you've got a grandchild now and like do you ever want to meet them does that make sense yeah so drop stuff then when they want to reconnect you say no sure so you can say no if you want to or you can say yes or you can say i'm not ready yet forever is a very very long time and human beings tend to change their mind so like don't worry about in a sense don't worry about being disowned. I'm not saying that it's not going to happen or that they'll ever come back or that you'll want them back.

But like, oftentimes, especially when it comes to family, I'm sure you all know this, family members will make vows to each other, which they rescind over time, right? Never again. If you ever do that again, I'm done with you forever. And then like, we're like, eh, I said forever, but I didn't mean forever. Right? Like, let's be honest. like that's pretty common.

Right? So your family disowns you and, oh, yeah, like, you have a grandson now. He's five years old and he's at the top of his class. He's in math class with the seventh grader, I mean, with the seven-year-olds. Can you believe that? Do you ever want to meet him? He's such a smart boy and he's so good at math. He's good at math like you are.

Right? Gene's of a strong pull. The ties of family is what keeps you bound, but sometimes we, especially if we're the kid, we don't realize that it binds our parents all the same. People are saying manipulation. Yeah, like that's, look, if someone else shows up to the battlefield with a sword, like you've got to show up with a sword too, right? No, I mean, you guys call this evil. I don't think it's evil. It's just if you guys have grown up, I mean, so this is my experience is like an Asian. Like this is, it's not evil. It's like standard practice for Asians.

emotional manipulation, face-saving moves. You call it manipulative because it's face-saving. Right? Like, you're giving you got to give your parents like an out, which is like, oh, like, look at how, like, I'm giving you the opportunity to be proud. You hate me because I've married the wrong person, but like you want to be proud of your kid who's good at math.

Let's set those two things side by side and let them war inside you. Right? And then you come to the conclusion. Yeah. So it's me again. Five is saying as an Asian, this is survival. I completely agree. If you guys really want to get emotionally manipulated, they say he's so talented at math, but I don't have the time to teach him. It would be really nice if you could teach him some math, because I know you're really good at it. And he's so gifted. You really want the nuclear bomb of manipulative relationships? That's it. When people are saying, oh, they're like, oh, find him a tutor.

oh yeah, we have found him a tutor, but just none of them, you know, he's just so smart. He really needs someone who's like exceptionally good at this stuff to teach him. Right? So like now suddenly it's like it's not, because this is what happens. It's like, you cut me off. Screw you. I'm never going to talk to you again and said, no, I need your help, Papa. I need your help.

Your grandchild is so bright he needs you. You'll get it? Like, yeah. Like you all can call. It's also playing to the family ego. All right. We can also call it face saving. And even Sun Tzu talks about this.

Sun Tzu says, always give your opponent an opportunity to escape. Always give him an out. Smart dude, Sun Tzu. All right. Okay. Let's talk. Okay, it's almost time. You all want to meditate for a little bit?

What are we doing? Berm. Grim Thor, 3. She's asking these, Alexothia, be a concern in relationships? Absolutely. Alexothymie is a concern for you. And if it's a concern for you, it's a concern in a relationship. So lexothymia is the inability to understand your internal emotional state.

You're essentially colorblind to your own emotions. And it causes problems in relationships because you don't realize that your emotions are like influencing your behavior. And you can't vocalize them. You can't talk about them. You can't process them. And so they like, they're almost like pulling strings from the shadows. And we never see the puppet master. And it's very infuriating for both you and your partner.

So it's a huge problem in relationships.