Statistic: On average, for each six hours of searching for people online and messaging them, you get one cup of coffee (meaning you get one date).
About 4 years ago, noted psychologist Dan Ariely gave an interview on what his research on online dating had revealed. And the answer was that as popular as online dating has become, it's a deeply unsatisfying experience.
Briefly, the reasons are:
1. People can't be reduced into their individual characteristics of height, weight, looks, body type etc, and be described easily such that a person can tell if they are a good match just from reading a profile. How many times have you met someone who seemed interesting in their profile, but turned out to be completely the wrong person for you? People are more like wine; complex, full-bodied, and only on meeting them in person can you tell whether you like them or not, but it's hard to describe how and why.
2. An online profile provides only very limited information on a person. A person in the flesh is much more complex. Since online profiles provide so little information (especially for gay apps as users seldom write much), online daters tend to go by the most prominent profile feature: the picture.
The picture becomes so important that even for people who should know better, physical attractiveness takes on an out-sized importance that overshadows everything else.
[Of course, physical attractiveness is always a consideration. It's just that online, it becomes *the* most important consideration.]
3. The phenomenon of assortative mating dramatically amplifies the importance of physical attractiveness in online dating. What assortative mating basically means is that while everyone tends to be attracted to the most beautiful people, for practical and realistic reasons, everyone tends to pair off with someone of a similar level of physical attractiveness. It's hard to score above your league, and you're also not likely to downgrade your expectations below your own level.
If online dating causes people to overvalue physical attractiveness, but the chances of actually coupling up with someone more attractive than yourself is still the same (meaning very, very low), what that means is that on any online dating website or app, you would expect to find:
1. The few beautiful people who are flooded with messages and who naturally, only reply to a few; and
2. A lot of not-so-beautiful people who are left frustrated and disheartened, with near-empty inboxes.
Statistic: OkCupid found that the most attractive women on their website received five times as many messages from straight men as the 'average' woman, and 28 times as many messages as the women at the low end of the scale. And men consistently tend to message the women way out of their league, while ignoring the women closer to them in attractiveness, even though their chances of getting a response from the good-looking women are low.
I would hazard a guess that gay men are not so different from straight men in this respect.
But let's step away from online dating for a while and discuss something related. Throughout the ages, less attractive men and women have still been able to find dates and get married (to someone of a similar level of attractiveness) and live happily ever after.
Do these ordinary people wake up every morning and look at their partner across the table and think to themselves, "I wanted someone more beautiful, but this was the best I could do. Too bad, life sucks."
Obviously not. People adapt. So, how do they adapt to the reality of their mate choice?
Simple. People change their priorities. They tell themselves that, "Look, I'm not gorgeous. But, I don't care so much about beauty. I care about intellect, personality, a good heart, a sense of humor...things that are more than skin deep."
And that's how they still find someone they're happy to be with together.
As it turns out, the people who care the most about beauty are...the beautiful. Which makes sense. Just as parents tend to think better of their own children than other people's children, we tend to value the things that we have, that we made ourselves, that we were given, more than the things that other people have. A good-looking and muscular guy is more likely to require that whoever he is with is also good-looking and muscular. In contrast, one benefit of being less good-looking is that it is easier to appreciate and value the less superficial but no less attractive qualities in a good person.
So, if online dating isn't all that it's cut out to be, what should we do?
My answer is that online dating is flawed, but it's still an option. And it's an easy and convenient one. But there are always other options, options that allow you to meet people in person and experience them in all their complexity, and perhaps force you to put aside a preoccupation with looks for just an evening.
And the answer is...speed dating.
