Is Online Dating Senseless?

Online dating often amplifies rather unfavorable patterns that already exist in our mating behavior, frequently leading to immense frustration for all involved parties as nobody seems to get what they want.

Most people have negative experiences, though interestingly, these experiences differ significantly between heterosexual men and heterosexual women.

However, the experiences shared by all genders are predominantly negative, leading to an increasing number of voices claiming that online dating is senseless.

Is Online Dating Senseless for Men?

Experiences of Men in Online Dating

For heterosexual men, typical experiences on online dating platforms go something like this:

• Create an online dating profile
• Typically, being completely ignored and receiving no attention whatsoever
• Searching for suitable matches and finding promising profiles
• Carefully reading through profiles
• Initiating contact with a woman and crafting a personal, thoughtful message, making an effort to reference the profile text
• Receiving no response
• Repeatedly going through this process countless times
• Increasing frustration and feelings of neglect, self-doubt, and loneliness
• Optionally, depending on personality:
• Turning away from the dating platform and deciding that online dating is senseless

OR

• Persisting and continuing to try
• Lowering their own standards and messaging more women who previously wouldn’t have been considered
• Prioritizing quantity over quality and investing less effort into individual interactions but messaging more people
• Eventually resorting to sending mass-produced messages like „Hi, how are you?“ and messaging about ten women per minute
• Messaging women and only checking their profile after receiving a response, then deciding if they are even interesting

 

Experiences of Women in Online Dating

In contrast, the typical experiences of heterosexual women in online dating are somewhat like this:

• Create an online dating profile
• Thirty minutes later, having 30 messages in the inbox all saying, „Hi, how are you?“
• Having so many messages in the inbox within a short period that it’s impossible to read, sort, and respond to them all
• Feeling completely overwhelmed by the flood of attention and being unable to keep up with reading, sorting, and responding to the messages
• As a result, depending on the woman’s personality:
• Being paralyzed by overwhelm and doing nothing
• Feeling guilty because so many men are making an effort and not being able to respond to them
• Feeling anxious about having to deal with all the attention
• Developing negative feelings towards online dating, delaying checking the inbox, and developing avoidance behaviors
• Eventually not logging in anymore and deciding that online dating is senseless

OR

• Persisting and trying to withstand the pressure
• Quickly scanning the profiles of men who messaged them due to the overwhelming number of messages, resulting in superficial selection
• Messaging with some men, getting to know them, and going on dates
• Hoping for a long-term, serious relationship
• Feeling disappointed when the guy turns out to only want sex or treats them poorly or has some other flaws
• Continuing the search in frustration and explicitly signaling that they are seeking something serious

 

Still encountering more men who are not serious despite initial apparent interest At this point, both genders often develop a lot of resentment towards online dating and towards the opposite gender, often leading to the conclusion that online dating is senseless.

 

But is it really?

What is sorely lacking here is mutual understanding of how dating platforms look for the other side and what incentives the dating platforms themselves provide to behave as people naturally do.

How should men behave when they simply receive no attention on dating platforms?

Especially when they feel they’ve already tried everything unsuccessfully and notice that personal messages just don’t work?

What else can they do but superficially scan women’s profiles and then quickly send a pre-written one-liner instead of a thoughtful message, especially when they already know the chance of getting a response is very low?

Certainly, one doesn’t have to condone this approach.

However, often there is no understanding from the other gender for the situation men find themselves in with online dating and the reasons that drive men to such actions.

Instead, there is often ridicule and many personal, irrational condemnations against men. Online Dating for Women

What should women do when they are bombarded with messages and don’t have the capacity to respond to them all?

When they necessarily have to be selective?

What else can they do but their best and at least respond to some of the messages?

In male circles, there is no understanding of the situation women find themselves in and instead many condemnations, blame, and generalizations about women.

 

If women were in the same situation as men, they would say that online dating is senseless.

If men were in the same situation as women, they would say that online dating is senseless.

 

Women and men are confronted with two different realities in online dating, which incentivize completely different patterns of behavior.

These behavioral patterns, in turn, create the entire asymmetry between men and women.

It’s like a feedback loop: because men and women are exposed to different situations, they react differently, which further reinforces the difference in their situations.

 

Such patterns arise when:

Gender norms dictate that men must make the first move towards women and initiate contact, creating a strong asymmetry where men send countless first messages and women only have to respond to messages

The dating pool expands through digital networking, creating a competitive situation where people suddenly compete with other people.

Both men and women want to see who is interested in them first and then select and filter out uninteresting candidates based on this data.

Infidelity in Relationships

While women simply have to wait to be contacted and then can select, men don’t have this luxury but have to message women on a whim without knowing beforehand if there is interest from the woman’s side.

It’s understandable then that men deal with this situation by messaging all women first and then waiting to see which women show interest.

Only then do they see who the woman actually is and if she’s even interesting.

This means, in reverse, that women often experience being messaged by men who ultimately have no interest in them and don’t respond.

In contrast, women can’t rely on the fact that those who message them actually have an interest in them.

It’s an attempt to make the best out of this asymmetry and reverse the rule where men make offers and women select from these offers.

The first contact then no longer means „I’m making you an offer“ but is a request „please make me an offer so I can decide if I’m interested“.

 

But that’s not all.

 

The imbalance on online dating platforms is further exacerbated by selection effects, what kind of people are permanently active on such online dating platforms, and which people attract attention.

Perhaps you’ve already noticed that the experiences of men and women just don’t quite align.

Women say they constantly encounter dishonest jerks who claim to want a long-term relationship but turn out to be empty words.

Meanwhile, there are countless men who sincerely seek a long-term relationship and say they would never behave like those jerks if they just had the chance to prove it — but nobody wants to give them that chance.

It fails even to attract attention and interest.

 

How can this be?

 

On the one hand, there seem to be countless men on online dating platforms who are serious, but they never seem to be found.

On the other hand, women desperately seek men who are serious. For this reason, many singles perceive online dating as senseless.