I went to the beach to think about dating apps’ algorithm

No I’m kidding. I went to the beach to chill, but I needed some (meaningful) content for a blog post, so let’s talk about dating apps.

It was scorching hot and spending 120 minutes on the train with multiple transfers was no pleasant experience but when I arrived and felt the calming ocean wind it was well-worth it.

The ice cream shop was actually closed, but when their staff saw my sad puppy face through the glass, they slided open the window and guess what, I got the last ice cream of the day!

Anyway,
been on dating apps for a while and as a software developer I’ve been always been baffled by how their algorithm works.

Like:
Why does your level of compatibility with someone change overtime?
What makes your profile appear in someone’s recommended list?
How do they measure your “attractiveness”?
Why does the online status feature feel buggy?

It felt so cool, because people weren’t here to, you know, actually soak themselves in the water, most were friends, couples just sitting around and enjoying the intermitten bubbling white waves.

And most of all, why do women always get more likes and matches than men?

Well, there are many reasons contributing to this fact including putting up a sloppy profile, using unoptimized photos or not being frequently active, et cetera, but I tried looking for somewhat more “mathematical” reasons and this is what I found. Long story short: the 80/20 rule.

First, crazy imbalance between male and female users. Men outnumber women by, most of the case two to one. And that’s still the positive scenario for men, which already makes the number of likes for women double and the number of likes for men halve. Sad.

Reason number two is more or less the consequence of the first one. Because women now have way more profiles to swipe, they have to be selective about who to return the like to. Men, on the other hand, don’t get lots of likes, can’t have the luxury of being picky and start giving more likes to improve the chance of getting matched. Makes sense.

Ahhhh, I was waiting for this soft light from golden hour. Gotta put on tons of sunblock earlier though.

Finally, a small part of “attractive” men get a big percentage of the likes. Attractive users receive exponentially more likes, which is another variable added to the simulation, resulting in the final result of average 92 likes & 6 matches for women but only 1 like and 0 match for men.

My friend was terrible at photography but one thing she did pretty well was pressing the shutter button like a THOUDSAND times to increase the chance of having some good shots and that worked.

Gosh, I love these Ghibli-looking trains of Enoden line.

In conclusion

Dating apps paint a somewhat distorted picture of the actual dating world and I hope guys can protect their self-esteem from getting any of its negative impacts. Someone already summed it up so well I gotta quote it again:

Dating for women is like shopping, dating for men is like a job interview.

Found someone’s scooter.

As an user who is lucky enough to receive a decent number of likes on dating apps I was sorta illusively stroking my ego haha
But it was fun.