<story><title>Dating: A Research Journal, Part 1 (2016)</title><url>https://putanumonit.com/2016/02/03/015-dating_1/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>strenholme</author><text>The secret to successful dating is the same as real estate: Location, location, location.  I had much better luck dating in central Mexico (where a gringo who has had a successful career stands out) than in Silicon Valley.&lt;p&gt;Even with a favorable location, the online dating market favors women.  When I was in Mexico, it took about 200-300 matches, which became 40-60 active online chats, which became 12-18 in-person dates, to find the woman who became my wife.  So about a 6% match to date ratio.&lt;p&gt;As pointed out in the comments to the linked article, this guy did well because he was in New York, which favors men.  Technology hot spots (Silicon Valley, Seattle, etc.) tend to favor women.  Places that favor Caucasian men include Latin America (Peru being a really good place; Columbia and Mexico also are favorable), Thailand, the Philippines, Eastern Europe, the Dominican Republic, and large parts of Africa.  In the US, the deep South (Alabama, Georgia, etc.) are somewhat better for successful men.&lt;p&gt;With places where the ratios favor the women, it takes about 100 messages to get a date (and a lot of you’re too short&amp;#x2F;too old&amp;#x2F;etc. canned rejections); to date requires I just send the same spam message over and over (“let’s meet for coffee!”) until someone says yes.  The hit ratio is just too low for me to get dating success with anything besides spamming.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dating: A Research Journal, Part 1 (2016)</title><url>https://putanumonit.com/2016/02/03/015-dating_1/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>starpilot</author><text>&amp;gt; To these I will add a crucial tip: make it obviously apparent that you aren’t copy-pasting. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder finds that a huge number of messages on OkCupid are mass copy-pasted spam (he figured this by analyzing keystrokes: if it took you two keys to write 50 words, those keys were Ctrl+V). These spammers aren’t only gems like ‘u R hot want 2 cum ovR’, but also generic missives like ‘Hi, I read your profile and I find you very interesting. I think we should get to know each other.’ Since mass-spamming is so quick and easy, it only takes a few spammers to fill every girl’s inbox. Experienced users sniff these out quickly. I strongly urge against being a spammer yourself: most of your time should be spent searching for the best potential matches. Once you find a great potential partner you should take the time to write them the best message you can come up with.&lt;p&gt;Rudder also talks about why message spamming isn&amp;#x27;t banned, though it is trivial to detect: &lt;i&gt;they often led to successful exchanges&lt;/i&gt;. The rest of the article is in this vein; favoring the most politically correct, and gracious to women, interpretations of the data, and not the most rational.</text></comment>