The Dating Ring Is Raising Money To Fly Women From NYC To SF
techcrunch.comI thought it would be funny to make a joke site with this idea (even grabbed sadsingles.com a few days ago for it) - it's interesting someone is actually trying it.
The dating situation is so bad for single men in their early to mid twenties on the west coast that I'm starting to think it's worth bailing on the area entirely and moving to NYC just for that purpose. (Palo Alto has got to be magnitudes worse than SF which is still pretty bad).
At first it looked like the situation in NYC was even worse for women with the 150k vs. 50k difference, but the population of NYC is 8.2million where SF is only 805k. Still dramatic, but not nearly as bad.
I think the numbers are a red herring. Finding a date is a numbers game. However, if you've spent any time in a committed relationship, you'll know that pretty much the only things that matter are how she feels about herself and how she feels about you (and the converses for you, which are heavily influenced by those). All the stuff about hotness, income, intelligence, background, careers, etc. fades into the background, and you figure out how to make it work.
I suspect the reason that dating sucks in the Bay Area is because the Bay Area attracts guys (and women, but to a lesser extent) who are overly concerned with how they're perceived by others. After all, everybody is chasing the latest hot startup that will make them wealthy and famous. That same insecurity - and the same insecurity that would make you bail on an area just because there are no girls - is massively unattractive to women.
I spent a year and a half dating around, including some very hot women. After realizing that none of that mattered and the only thing important was how I felt when I was with her, it took me all of 3 weeks to find a partner.
If dates are generally a prerequisite to relationships than the numbers issue tends to have a lot of influence (age does too).
My impression from living here isn't that it's people worried about their status, I think it's just that there aren't enough people - do you live in the bay area?
I do live in the Bay Area.
And my point is that there are enough people around that getting dates should not be a significant problem. I went out with about 25-30 people before finding my girlfriend; to get to that involved about 200 OKCupid messages. There were about 5 dates in the 3 weeks before and 3 weeks after I first met her.
SF != "the west coast". Easy on your generalizations.
Bay Area then?
SF to San Jose - I've also heard LA isn't really better, but I guess there's the central coast.
The proper name is "Man Jose."
What assumptions / observations underpin your conclusion that "The dating situation is so bad for single men in their early to mid twenties on the west coast"?
> What assumptions / observations
There are twice as many single men as single women in LA. Exact opposite of NYC.
This article makes it obvious how far behind technology NYC is compared to SF. Men in SF don't want women from NYC flown to see them. Men in SF want women delievered by Quadricopter drones.
I believe this is not the first time this happened in San Francisco.
During the Gold Rush, the gender ratio was about 50 men per woman. It got better with the years, but party organisers kept doing their damnedest to get women to go to their balls, inviting (and arranging for travel for) women from as far as Missouri, over the Pony Express.
Pardon the language, but this reminds me of the Fuck Truck (at least in decades past, when the MIT male to female ratio was way more out of whack):
Sure, but given these people could not get a date in NY, I would suggest it is more like the Fright Flight, or the Plain-Jane Plane.
And in a third, different place on Earth a man is choosing between keeping his sanity or caving in and typing "valleywag.gawker.com" in his browser's address bar.
"Also, not great, as pointed out by another TechCrunch writer: The implicit assumption that all dating is between women and men."
Another possibility is that there's no first-order[0] geographical arbitrage opportunity presented by gender imbalances when men seek men and women seek women.
[0] there may be "second-order" abritrage opportunity, in terms of sub-types of men or women.
Humor is all this is.
Open question: where do men here in SF try to meet women?
As a man, I have yet to see such a lack of single women in the city that would necessitate a project like this, even when I was dating around for 9 months.
Me thinks either standards are too high or don't go far enough out of your comfort zone. I could imagine being wrapped up in a startup, eat, breathing, sleeping it. And yes, not too many single women in the startup scene.
But startup != San Francisco, though it may seem that way from the news media.
As a guy with wickedly amazing success on OKCupid and Craigslist in New York and elsewhere, in SF alone for a month, I can confirm that the usual methods that smart, hardworking, tech-savvy dudes use for finding strangers to date are completely oversaturated in SF.
Offline is the way, obviously, but ain't nobody got time for that.
They need to make this frictionless...much like Uber. Make an app where I push a button and a 'dateable' girl gets delivered as soon as possible to a bar of my choice for an instant date. She doesn't have to be from nyc.
LOL. :)
The meta: know what you really want. Sex, companionship or kids: select up to two adjacent goals. Pick all 3 if you have a second condo and a burner phone.
...and why didn't they raise the money to fly a planeload of eligible MEN to NYC?
According to a comment by the founder on the article, that's in the works going up online tommorow. They decided to do this one first because of winter weather in NYC vs SF.
... you mean it wasn't because of rampant sexism? Damn, there goes my flamewar.
...because like Horoscopes, Magazines telling us what we should eat/wear/say, and the rest, Men don't generally fall for this kind of thing.
Yet they're still funding this campaign to have women sent to them. Which is one of the saddest things I've typed in recent memory.
(and if you really think that "men" don't fall for being told what to eat/wear/say you're horribly, sadly mistaken)
Years ago, Dilbert had a hilarious series of strips about mail order brides. But I agree that it is sad.
I'll just leave this here.
http://search.dilbert.com/search?p=Q&lbc=dilbert&uid=7339291...
GQ, Maxim and FHM would beg to differ.
It's a miracle Felix Denis got rich off those considering it's a double-ended marketplace (ads, mag buyers) and that UK lads mags competition is brutality incarnate.
My issues with this: 1. Whats the goal from the date? Nobody is going to commit to a long term relationship, and I doubt you will convince a guy to leave his job in SF to move to NY from this date.
2. Waste of resources/emissions. Sure, the effect of this is negligible since the planes will be flying anyways, but in principal this just seems like a huge waste of resources.
3. Given 1, it seems that this "date" is really just going to be mostly one-time affairs. Which is cool. But why not just find a date locally or hire an escort.
Not sure I agree about point three - why do you think they will get more success in SF than in NY? If they cannot get a "date" in NY, I am not sure they would get one in SF. Unless the organisers provide everyone with masks, cover of darkness and free booze!
Dating Ring couldn't wait until a single date's worth of Groupon signups were had before moving on to the next pivot? http://www.groupon.com/deals/the-dating-ring-1
The ratio in New York City is hardly a problem since the population is so big (8 million). It is like 53% women and 47% men.
I am a man and went to a college that was 55% men and 45% women. I never felt like there was a lack of women.
The raw numbers don't paint an accurate picture of dating inequality. The pairwise nature means you need to subtract out those already paired with a dedicated partner. That will vary for different groups and can cause extreme imbalances in the dating population that you might not expect.
In your college of young adults, suppose 30% of the population is already paired, which is 15% of each gender. That leaves 40% available men to 30% available women, a 1.3:1 ratio, not too bad.
In New York City's adult population of all ages, suppose 86% of the population is already paired, 43% of each gender. That leaves 10% available women chasing 4% available men, a 2.5:1 ratio, quite lopsided.
> Kay told me the stereotypes are backed up by her site’s numbers — in New York, there are 1.82 as many female users as male, while in San Francisco, there are 1.42 as many male users as female.
Paradox of Choice on both sides could make it seem there are no options when there are millions of them (or at least thousands of viable ones).
VCs should be concerned. They are trying to fly in distractions. What if your founder starts wasting time dating women? Shouldn't they be focused on their startups? Startups are on a peninsula for a reason :)
Link to the crowdtilt: https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/working-on-it/descriptio...
Most expensive city in America, the most downright tyrannical laws in the country, might come crashing down on your head at any moment... oh, and NO WOMEN.
I thought you guys were supposed to be smart.
I wonder what proportion would be willing to relocate either direction, or is that not the idea? Long distance never worked out for me.
Wait - so they can't get a date in NY, and they think the standards are lower in SF, so they might get a date?
Majority opinion is that NY nightlife/dating life has higher ratio of girls to guys while SF has way more guys. So it doesn't mean standards are supposed to be lower, rather the ratio should even out between the 2 cities.
It's the "elsewhere is valuable" "logic."
Protip for men: Davis, CA not during summer has the highest concentration of unmarried, college educated, single women of any college town in the US, outside the Boston metro. Thursday night is salsa night at The Grad. Get your silly colored sunglasses and go.
The other trick is to have women fly out to meet you, oh wait, that one has an API now. :) Seriously, distance is another "barrier" so it is good for the stationary party (not that kind, the human kind).
> The other trick is to have women fly out to meet you, oh wait, that one has an API now.
curl -X POST https://thedatingring.com/api/v1/women -d '{"hair": "brown", "interests": ["me, duh", "froyo", "kale"]}'
=> {"flightNumber": 1525, "airline": "United", "departureTime": 201403051250, "arrivalTime": 201403051545}
Unfortunately, the one you got lied about her picture. :)
Bad cert.
Did she lie about that too or was she using GnuTLS?
GoldDigginProTip: The moneyed men are all in Los Altos, except their newer model wives are young and hot.
"It's like Great Expectations but with airplanes."
Any service that takes money from people by preying upon their dreams is inherently evil. This doesn't solve dating because it's unsolvable on purpose. Unplanned spontaneous clicking probably won't happen when it's the advertised goal. Joining interest groups on meetup would be infinitely better.
Spontaneous clicking is more likely to happen if you meet a lot more people!
Much less likely if that's the advertised goal. It's better to go about group activities people enjoy, and not let dating become their all-consuming goal.