Why are most women online like this?

I thought that on dating website looks are the most important thing was well established for most people. They're not gonna look at your picture and go, "He might be really unattractive, but he might have a good personality so I'll spend my time messaging this stranger just in case" you message the attractive people lol

Unless they provide us with the details of the design, details of the statistical tests used (if any?), the hypotheses addressed, yes, I am saying it's not valid. Nothing seems operationalised, who determines the attractive ratings of the photos in the first place?
Read one of the studies I provided, take a look at the methods and results sections, and look back at that blog post.

I'm glad you were able to see the truth,

many men are still in the dark about this.

many men out there still believe the lies about personality/looks women feed them.

I've ran a few experiments too, and pretty much the same thing happened. I've known other males who have run experiments like this also and some have sunk into deep depression after finally seeing the truth, I believe one even became suicidal.

I've posted this before but these are some similar observations:

"As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh." - https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

More very interesting reads: http://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/

https://sirtyrionlannister.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/female-mating-skew-ii-supported-by-online-dating-experiment/

I'd take it as seriously as a Daily Mail article.

It's almost as if women can sense the desperation, the imposition of double standards, and the thinly veiled loathing and contempt.
Or is this a generalisation too far?

Hi, I read one one of the studies to around page 17 of 63 but had to say that at the end of this paragraph I was forced to stop reading as it was now clear to me the study isn't worth the paper it is written on

http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=454026098004120089031111108089011093000085002012023032095092076109069080095000114006057018122039107109012082103121021027065039037082047036090091101067096076113091087014121083069001069123121080120024085121098029106000027020013003106127126102004083&EXT=pdf

"The median man (in terms of photo attractiveness) can expect to hear back from the median woman with an approximately 35% chance, whereas the median woman can expect to get a reply with a more than 60% chance. Figure 4.2 also
provides evidence that more attractive men and women are “pickier.” The least attractive women are two to three times more likely to reply to a first-contact e-mail than the most attractive women. However, despite this difference in “pickiness,” we see that men in the bottom quintile of the attractiveness distribution can expect to hear back from the top quintile of women with more than 20% probability. "



having seen a large amount of dating experiments [similar to the OP's] and also done a few myself, I can categorically say that there is no way a below average looking guy can get a 1 in 5 reply rate from women in the top percentile of looks when it comes to online dating.

The only exception to this, is if said guy is a multi millionaire [yes, i saw an experiment on tinder like this and the guy did get a few decent matches]


If you don't believe me then I challenge you to make a profile on pof of a regular below average looking guy in a good populated city .. who earns less than £60 000 PA per Anum, and you won't even get a 1 in 5 reply rate from an average woman, let alone a woman in the top percentile of looks.

you can give him the best personality in the world too, and use any opener you wish on women.

I will then make a profile of a top 20% guy in the same city. I shall give him a Job in mc donalds. I shall make his profile text douchey. heck, i'll even write that he just got out of prison.

I guarantee I'll get more conversations than you

If you are confident in the research papers you provided then you should have no problem accepting my challenge.

I'll be quick, because simply, I cannot be arsed. I have no interest in this as a research topic and only wanted to provide some research to the guy that was at least peer-reviewed, and from decent research institutions. To say an MIT study is not worth the paper it's written on is bold to say the least. You must have a lot of confidence in your intellectual ability....


1. Why on earth would you stop reading a paper because it yielded different results to what you expected? That is another level of selective attention. The fact that it had different results to what you expected should surely encourage you to read the paper more closely, including the discussion to help you find out why that is the case? Although I do apologise for providing a 63 page paper to read, Christ I'm surprised you even bothered with that one.

But nonetheless, to say that it's not worth the paper it's written on because you disagree with the results and not the method/ rationale is a bit ridiculous.

2. You've conducted your own "experiments", how so? Please don't say you've done your own little game of making fake profile accounts, that is not an experiment.

3. By your "I guarantee I get more responses than you " remark, I take it you seem to think the paper is suggesting that a bottom percentile photo of a male with high income, will yield more first responses than a photo of a man in the top percentile with a low income? I haven't read the paper but where does it suggest that? There's nothing to "challenge" because the basis of your challenge doesn't even relate to the paper, as far as I can tell. But if you want to waste your time making fake profiles then by all means... have fun, enjoy?

4. You seem to think that "first responses" equate to interest. What does the study include as a "first response"?

this is my favorite subject. my reply will not be as "quick" as yours

I was reluctant to read any of the links you provided in the first place due to skepticism on my part, which came from having spent quite a bit of time on dating sites myself and seen a lot of experiments and done a few too. Plus the fact that you're not a man so could have no direct experience with this either :P

But I decided to look over links anyway. Upon spotting something which I know to be TOTALLY false I decided to just stop reading. That paper was already too long to begin with and that paragraph just lost it all credibility, in the same manor I would stop reading a Geography book written in 2016 If the Author wrote somewhere "Do not drive too far east of Africa because the earth is flat". I wouldn't care who it was written by or what level of qualification or endorsement it had, I would just stop reading.

And yes, I've done my own experiments. You seem to not want to take people doing their own experiments seriously for some reason. I was getting less than 1 girl out of 100 replying to me in London on pof when sending them unsolicted mail and I had listened to all the advice women give about profile text, opening messages, reading their profile text and mentioning specific things when messaging and it wasn't making a blind bit of difference. So I simply deleted my pic and put one up of a shirtless white guy who was around 7.5 in looks [imo] and started sending off messages again. Only took 3 messages for him to get a reply from a hot girl. He was getting a large amount of views too ..also a large amount of unsolicited mail. This experiment may not have been "scientific" or done under lab controls or "peer reviewed" ...or got an official stamp of approval from some governing body or whatever ...but it was CLEAR that personality meant diddly squat online and that all that women are looking for was looks.

I ran some other experiments after that as well [slightly differant], I could not understand why a good looking guy like myself was doing so badly ofline and online. Soon I was forced to acknowledged that I was wasn't as good looking as I thought and that I was over rating myself. Don't blame me for this lol, it's actually pretty common. I have looked into this [including seeing studies] and discovered that most people actually think they are better looking than they infact are. The average girl does not see herself as average, she see's herself as a 7 because "If people took the time to get to know me they'd see what a wonderful personal I am" ..., below average girls often think they are above average too citing their " Amazing personality" as justification for their ratings. Men over rate themselves also but usually don't cite reasons such as this, maybe it's just pure arrogance on their part.

Although my experiments and conclusions reached were not 100% scientific I believe they were valid as when i started working on my looks [gym] eventually i started to do both better online and ofline. It's still a struggle to get a date online buy ofline it's significantly easier. I put that down to the fact im not really very photogenic. I sometimes even get wolf wistelend by girls on fri/sat night. If i never did my "experiments" I would have not improved my dating life as I would be still listening to the false advice many women like to spread.

to any guy reading this, bodyshape is another lie many women like to spread. Most women will say they find "slim and toned" most attractive. They don't. Most women will also say they find brawny guys unattractive [too much muscles] and actually prefer skinny or average guys to this. I decided to do one of my experiments and put up a shirtless skinny guy and a shirtless brawny guy on pof. 3 guesses what happened.

tbh, having said all that there is a grain of truth in that women don't prefer brawny guys. I would not recommend a guy aims for this figure if his goal is maximize the opposite sex's attraction to him...


regarding my challenge. I challenge you to get a 1 in 5 reply rate from average women with a below average man then
the paper said a below average man should get a 1 in 5 reply rate with top percentile women, so this challenge should be really easy for you if you believe the paper.


the study said that a bottom percentile man can expect to hear back from a top percentile woman over 20% of the time. by "hear back" I assume this is a "first responce" or reply to the message.



PS: you mentioned you haven't read the paper. You should not link to papers or research you haven't read first, because what can happen is individuals such as myself may decide to call you out over things written in said paper

You do not seem to understand how science works. Finding results which contradict "opinion" or "personal experience" (which involves a multitude of bias, see selective attention, and confirmation bias) does not equate to saying something is black when it is white. If the method, data analysis seem reasonable, then you have to take the results seriously, in the name of good science. Ignoring results which go against your opinion is very bad science, surely you can see that.

If you pointed out a lot of methodological flaws then I'd accept that. I didn't post research papers that I approved of, like I said, I posted papers just to give the previous poster some insight into the research in the field. Academic, objective research, not toy experiments by discontent users of POF


Well I've actually read completely contradictory evidence to that. I remember years ago, during my A-levels, learning specifically that women are more likely to rate themselves harshly or more accurately, whilst males are more likely to overrate themselves. I'll try and dig up the paper when I'm on my computer later. Show me the study which supports your view?

I don't want people to take their own experiments seriously, perhaps because I've just completed a Psychology degree and that goes against everything I've learned in the past 4 years. I don't want to have to patronise you with what is a good experiment, but perhaps you could read up on it.

Why does it surprise you that a better picture leads to more looks, and more responses? I'm sure the same would go for women?

You haven't called the paper out of anything, except merely that you disagree with the results For anything you've said to have substance, you should respond with "the stats don't make sense because of x flaw", not "the stats don't make sense because it goes against my personal experience". The latter means nothing really.

In order for that to be fair, I'd have to use the same site, same profile, same locality etc. And plus, I really don't want to waste my time, like I said, I don't really care

On a personal note, why the hell do you use POF anyway? It's utter ****, I don't use dating sites but I've had friends/ family use it. If you want to get somewhere go on Match, I'd say Tinder is probably better than POF.

Its not just women . Men do this too. Put up a picture of a good looking girl and men will come chasing after you in hoards. Put up a profile without a picture and none would care. This sort of applies to life as well as the internet. It applies to both genders. people are attracted to 'attractive' beautiful things. This is why we call them attractive because beauty attracts attention. *

P.S. I'm not sure the internet is a good place to look for a relationship of the sort you are looking for.