They are: aesthetics, mental health, social capital, wealth, physical attractiveness, and niceness.
So if I’m below average on probably all of these (and extremely below average on at least mental health and social capital), is the right thing to do just to give up on dating for the foreseeable future?
While it’s important to bear in mind the possibility that you’re not as below average as you think, I don’t know your case so I will assume you’re correct in your assessment.
Perhaps give up on online dating. “Offline” dating is significantly more forgiving than online.
Here is a table of who women message on a dating app, organized by attractiveness quintile:
From Kreager, Derek A.; Cavanagh, Shannon E.; Yen, John; Yu, Mo (2014). “Where Have All the Good Men Gone?” Gendered Interactions in Online Dating. Journal of Marriage and Family, 76(2), 387–410. doi:10.1111/jomf.12072
Men in the bottom quintile clearly get substantially fewer messages, but they don’t get zero messages. 3% of messages from top quintile women go to bottom quintile men!
I don’t feel qualified to give advice about your personal life though. Whether or how you should be dating depends on a bunch of factors like what your goals are, how costly it is for you to date, etc.
Note that a certain percentage of ‘female senders’ on dating apps have a financial motive. Some are offering various forms of sex work (from nude photos to forms of prostitution), and some are part of an organized scam. (pretending to be an attractive female sender who is just a little short of money and needs gift card number in order to ‘meet’ the recipient).
A quick eyeball analysis of the data you have shows 1-2% of the senders are likely doing this. Look how for medium-high and medium the percentages go down. This is because a scammer is not going to copy a profile photo that isn’t top quintile.
Look how for medium-high and medium the percentages go down.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re pointing at here. Can you explain more? Every category of female sender is monotonically less likely to send messages to less attractive males, as you would expect, without any consideration of spam.
Upper right, 0.03 messages from high->low male receivers.
One row down, 0.02 messages from medium-high->low male receivers.
To me I mentally see this as 0.01 to 0.03 of these messages are motivated by something other than attractivness, aka financial. It could be just noise.
Also, if some fraction of males are presenting an extreme profile (a-la Jacob of putanumonit) they could be rated low attractiveness “on average” while still getting messages from the tiny fractional percent of females of each attractiveness band who are interested in that unique profile.
So if I’m below average on probably all of these (and extremely below average on at least mental health and social capital), is the right thing to do just to give up on dating for the foreseeable future?
While it’s important to bear in mind the possibility that you’re not as below average as you think, I don’t know your case so I will assume you’re correct in your assessment.
Perhaps give up on online dating. “Offline” dating is significantly more forgiving than online.
Here is a table of who women message on a dating app, organized by attractiveness quintile:
Men in the bottom quintile clearly get substantially fewer messages, but they don’t get zero messages. 3% of messages from top quintile women go to bottom quintile men!
I don’t feel qualified to give advice about your personal life though. Whether or how you should be dating depends on a bunch of factors like what your goals are, how costly it is for you to date, etc.
Note that a certain percentage of ‘female senders’ on dating apps have a financial motive. Some are offering various forms of sex work (from nude photos to forms of prostitution), and some are part of an organized scam. (pretending to be an attractive female sender who is just a little short of money and needs gift card number in order to ‘meet’ the recipient).
A quick eyeball analysis of the data you have shows 1-2% of the senders are likely doing this. Look how for medium-high and medium the percentages go down. This is because a scammer is not going to copy a profile photo that isn’t top quintile.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re pointing at here. Can you explain more? Every category of female sender is monotonically less likely to send messages to less attractive males, as you would expect, without any consideration of spam.
Upper right, 0.03 messages from high->low male receivers.
One row down, 0.02 messages from medium-high->low male receivers.
To me I mentally see this as 0.01 to 0.03 of these messages are motivated by something other than attractivness, aka financial. It could be just noise.
Oh yeah, I agree that’s a bit weird but I would guess it’s just noise.
Also, if some fraction of males are presenting an extreme profile (a-la Jacob of putanumonit) they could be rated low attractiveness “on average” while still getting messages from the tiny fractional percent of females of each attractiveness band who are interested in that unique profile.