99. How to Dominate Dating Apps without Lying
Using my system you can be the top ranked person in your community without spending anything, and without deception.
As I explained in my article on Dating Apps, which I highly recommend you read prior to this article, dating apps are designed to not work for you and can cost you $200 USD or more per month. So basically they are a waste of time unless you have a method to get around the 80% of participants who lie about themselves, and a way to defeat the matchmaker that is designed to frustrate you to keep you spending.
This article is primarily aimed at those who don’t want to misrepresent themselves on dating apps, and who want to find others who don’t misrepresent themselves. I use this approach for 2 reasons:
I was born without the jealousy gene, and also the lying gene. This condition made life pretty hard for me until I realized this was not the case for other people. So I see the world through this lens. I understand this can make me exploitable in many situations so I have designed countermeasures that can work for anyone.
If either or both parties are lying, then things aren’t going to work out. I’m assuming you are putting effort into dating because you want to have a positive result. Of course if you are a predator, things will never be as good as they are right now and you won’t need my advice.
If both sides of a date have an 80% chance of lying, then your odds of a typical date involving two (at least briefly) honest people is 20%*20%= 4%. Thus only one out of 25 dates is an honest date and 96% of dates are some flavor of predatory.
Note that this is a big part of why I think that all dating apps should require effective authentication prior to letting anyone use the app. All participants need to give up some privacy (which wouldn’t exist in natural/tribal environments) in order to weed out the predators (most people).
The solutions I use require you to figure out how to manage the Machines (the App algorithms) and the involved Humans. The Machine is easier since it’s more predictable. But Humans are also predictable, you just need to know the Algorithms they use even if they are more dynamic/varied. The ultimate goal here is to completely control the Machine algorithm, but since it depends on human interactions, you need to be able to manage both.
How to Control the ELO Matchmaker
With the exception of the OKCupid matchmaker (explained below), all Match Group apps use some variation of the ELO matchmaker. The OKCupid matchmaker is much more thoughtful, but contains a critical vulnerability that makes it even easier to subvert than the ELO matchmaker.
In the ELO matchmaker there is no penalty for both sides rejecting each other. Of course you want to have both sides match each other, but even then that only gets you a date not a success. Thus the human factors later in this paper. The other scenario you want is someone accepting you but you rejecting them. This gives you a lot of points and costs them points. Not my favorite trade but this is a 65 year old Algorithm made for chess players, not one of my algorithms designed expressly for dating. What you want to avoid at all costs is you accepting someone and them rejecting you. That’s going to cost you points.
The matchmaker will try to pair you with others with similar points/rank. If you begin losing points you will get matched with less and less desirable people. This isn’t a judgement on my part, the matchmaker is literally tracking how much each person is desired. That’s how it ranks you. Of course people don’t like being undesired, that’s why they lie. They could improve themselves, but that takes so much more work.
Thus my approach is to read profiles carefully and of course craft my profile carefully (explained below) in order to guide the right people (the ones I right swiped on) into right swiping me also. I want to make sure we both win, and I want to make that as easy as possible for the other person.
This will require a bit of reading and a bit of discipline on your part as you only will allow yourself to right swipe on between 1% and 5% (tops) of the people the ELO will show you. Exactly with people you will right swipe on is explained in The Human Element section. The goal here for men is to raise their match percent from <1% to about 50%. The goal for women is to get the most compatible men to right click on them. Women don’t have a problem being “high ranked”. They have a problem with false positives: going on dates with men that don’t value them beyond one date.
How to Control the OKCupid Matchmaker
The OKCupid matchmaker is very different from ELO because it was actually made for dating. I haven’t played with it for about 5 years and I’ve been that most of the questions have been removed, but I believe it is otherwise unchanged. It requires you to answer a lot of questions, and then set how important that question is to you. This is critical because the highest setting raises the “weight” of that question in my matchmaker by a factor of 250! Similarly, the lowest setting lowers importance by a factor of 250.
Okay, that’s a bit of math. How can you completely exploit/break this? There are two kinds of questions you will see on OKCupid:
Obvious Questions are those with an obvious right answer. “Do you like harming people?” Of course not! You are a completely normal person! So you know what the right answer is. If you pick that one, 99% of other people will also.
Wedge Questions are those that require a tough answer that will alienate most people. There are no “right” answers. All of them will turn off a big chunk of the population. You will answer this honestly.
Okay so what do you do with this information? That depends on if you are a player/predator, or if you are an honest person.
OKC Player Approach: Find all of the Obvious Questions and answer them the “right” way. Then set their value to 250X. If you come across a Wedge Question, skip it. If you can’t skip it, set it’s value to 1/250X (0.004X). This will give you a 99% match with everyone that isn’t following my advice. The skies will part and Angels will sing because you will become the Soulmate for 99% of the people on Earth. Potential female matches will start ovulating. Men will start researching which wedding rings they can afford.
Of course this is a dishonest approach and I don’t recommend people use it, but even those few honest people reading this need to know this is out there and there are probably some people who know how to do this.
OKC Honest Approach: You do the opposite. You skip or down-rank the Obvious Questions and you try to find as many Wedge Questions as possible and max-rank them. This actually obliterates anyone using the Player Approach against you. They can’t get more than 50% match with you. You will get MUCH lower rankings with everyone, since almost everyone is dishonest, but those few people who are actually good matches with you will float to the top. Finding a needle in a haystack is quite easy if you have a strong enough magnet.
If you are on OKCupid, that’s all the help you need one way or another. The next section is mostly aimed at ELO users, though it’s helpful for everyone.
The Human Element
Controlling the human interaction to make sure it ends up positive (for both sides) is a bit more work. While players/predators could use this information, it would just reduce the number of people they match with so they would be unlikely to adopt it. Players aren’t going for quality, they want quantity. The exception might be someone just looking for someone with money, like the Tinder Swindler. I’m not inclined to teach anyone how to do that.
Step 1 is probably the hardest for everyone, because it requires you to know your worth. If you think you are a “10”, this paper is not for you. If you really are a 10, you don’t use apps. You just walk outside and people will stick to you like flies on shit. For the other 99.98% of us it is very important that you realistically rank yourself. Let’s say I think I’m an “8”. I train very hard to be in the top 1% of the population for fitness and I’m aging gracefully as a nutrition educated vegan. But I don’t spend money on clothes or photos and I’m not trying to have mass appeal. I don’t even use social media.
Okay so if I’m an “8”, what rank am I going after? I recommend “7”. Go after someone 1 rank LOWER than you. If you have hypergamy instincts and need someone as high or higher than you, you are chasing a world of pain. Anyone higher rank than you SHOULD dump you or cheat on you as soon as they find someone higher rank than you. Which probably won’t be hard for them. Dating is a free market, and loyalty requires both sides caring about each other, not social rank.
Remember that arbitrage scale that I described in Dating Apps? I hope you read it! If you try to date a “10”, they won’t put anything on their side of the scale. They ARE the table!! But someone of lower rank than you knows they have to load up their side of the scale otherwise they won’t have a chance with you. And, if they get lazy in the relationship later on it is easy to replace them since you are higher rank.
You might be tempted to do some dumb stuff with a side chick/dude at some point but don’t. Finding a good partner is a lot of work, and worth a lot more than some side action. Of course if you are a dopamine addict, you are going to mess this up. That’s why I try to coach people not to go that route.
Step 2 involves doing as much of the arbitrage on your end as possible with whatever space you are given (500 characters on Tinder isn’t much). What unusual qualities do you have that your target audience would really value? Detail those qualities as exactly as you can. What qualities do you want in exchange? List those precisely.
Someone that sees you as valuable, and likewise sees themselves as valuable because they have some of the skills/traits you listed as being valued by you is MUCH more likely to right swipe on you. And they know you are much more likely to right swipe on them. Especially if they see you as 1 rank point above them, almost 100% of those people will right swipe on you. That’s how you get match percents of 50% or higher even as a guy.
Step 2 isn’t high tech. It’s maybe even old fashioned. But some old things still work. Like honestly. It’s not completely obsolete. Now when you meet you just have to authenticate that you both have what you offered and you are off to the races.
Because of character limits, you need to abbreviate as much as possible. I usually put a plus sign “+” in front of things I like. If I REALLY like something I put “++”. Likewise if I don’t like someone I put a “-” sign in front. This allows me to list some important things to me with limited space.
I usually list that I am a massage expert/instructor and that I’m a good pair with either an athlete or someone with chronic back/hip/etc pain. I’ve had fantastic matches with “broken” 9’s and 10’s this way that I likely would not have qualified for. Of course this means I have to “put out” (massage! keep it clean!) to keep my side of the scale properly balanced. Whatever you offer, you have to actually deliver.
This also dovetails nicely with my social game design principle of “interdependency”. A game where someone can do everything themselves turns into a “Massively Singleplayer Game”, which is going to be a commercial failure. If players need to help each other (like in healthy real life situations) then they are going to enjoy being social a lot more and feel valued by their fellow players. The same just happens to be true in “real life”, which my models attempt to emulate or even restore since “real life” is disintegrating.
Alas game developers aren’t usually very good at interpersonal relationships (hence their work with computers) so you would expect that modelling effective social meta design would be hard for them. Of course most people are bad at relationships also. Having 1000 first dates just makes you good at first dates and bad at second dates.
I will talk more about what to do after you find someone and get away from dating in the next paper. Please don’t be shy about asking questions here.
At the Finish Line
All of this preparation just gets your foot in the door. Up to this point the process has been mostly intellectual. But that’s not sexy for 99% of people. When you are actually meeting someone for the first time, a few tips will help you:
Be prepared: If you are organising the date (ie you are the guy) then have a plan. Plan for where you are going to meet and how you are going to get out if your date is inauthentic. Also, have a Plan B, C, D, etc in case things go well. My best first dates last 3 full days (72 hours) without sex (I personally don’t do it ever on first date) and can cover multiple cities. Being adventurous, but not desperate, is very sexy.
Consent: Making sure both sides respect consent culture is super important. Regardless of your gender, ask your potential partner if they are comfortable with touch etc before you do that.
Be Animalistic: If things get romantic, be prepared to show your inner animal. You are, after all, an animal. Being in touch with that fact demonstrates vitality and that you aren’t just another boring drone. I grew up feral, and while I don’t bring that to work, people appreciate it when I unpack it on an adventure.
Listen: Being able to pick up on little body signals is both sexy and can increase safety for both of you. If you detect something “odd”, make sure to ask what that is before you progress. Most people are bad at both listening and communicating.
Chaos Happens: Something you don’t expect is bound to happen. Be flexible. It’s actually great news if something you are not expecting occurs. This tests the ability to adapt for both of you. You won’t see the other person’s character until the stress goes up a bit. When you hit a bump in the road, slow down and do a safety check, make sure the other person is good, and then agree before speeding up again. The most challenging “chaos” in my experience is when the other person has undeclared mental illness and when it emerges their personality changes entirely. That’s going to require a full stop and a talk. This is, unfortunately, not all that uncommon.
The worst thing that can happen on a date is if nothing happens on a date. Some people just are so used to passive media that they can’t actively exist in real space. It’s unfortunately normal. But it’s a good sign to pass as no one is paying you to be an entertainer.
Good luck out there, let me know how this works for you!