Are the top 20% of men showered with attention and are "Chads" poaching average women on dating apps?
What the OKCupid data show. 🧵
This chart is often interpreted to show that men are "fair" with women on dating apps. However, these are just ratings.
Here are ratings against a distribution of actual messages - "revealed preferences" if you will.
These charts are kind of a mess.
A better way to visualize this data is in Rudder's book Dataclysm:
This is over one week and the OKCupid blog charts don't specify a time frame. But here are the ratios for men and women:
The number of messages that the most attractive men receive - even the top 5% - is incredibly small.
The most attractive women receive messages every day. The most attractive men do not.
Below average men receive about as many messages as men up to the top 10%.
Over a month, an average man might receive 4 messages. A man in the top 10% between 8-12.
This is expected - attractive people will receive more messages. But it's a remarkably small difference for most men, even at the highest levels of attractiveness.
The ratio by attractiveness is the same.
But as this is a ratio, it doesn't mean that the absolute messages are the same for men and women.
An average woman receives about 5 messages per week, or 20 per month.
But a woman in the top 10% receives 25 per week and 100 per month.
Who sends messages also matters.
For women, less attractive women send more.
Attractive women send fewer messages - they don't need to send any at all. They receive a lot.
Attractive men, on the other hand, actually send more messages! Perhaps counterintuitive.
But maybe not - since attractive men still receive very few.
Attractive men can't sit back and just respond. They don't get that kind of attention, as attractive women do.
What we see from this data:
Even if you are a very attractive man, spontaneous attention is rare.
You have to send messages to women.
And for the most attractive women, you're competing with most men - men who are as attractive as you, more, less, etc.
Less attractive women send more messages.
First messages you receive from women are, unfortunately, unlikely to be from women that you really desire.
Beautiful women do not fall into your lap on apps.
Even for a "Chad."
Average women and below are also not killing it on dating apps.
How many of the 5 messages per week an average woman receives do you think is from a man she finds to be attractive?
Remember how women rate men on OKCupid:
Even when a woman is fairly compromising and goes on many dates it is common that she won't find most of the men attractive:
Also keep in mind - men outnumber women on dating apps 3 to 1.
The real picture we see from dating apps is that they don't work for a lot of people - including women.
They aren't a cornucopia of hot men available to average women.
A bit more like this:
The most attractive men also don't have easy access to the most attractive women, given the high rate of competition. (3 to 1.)
And they don't seem to be pursuing less attractive women much either.
About 40% of American relationships form on apps and about half of app users are happy.
This is either a good figure or a bad one depending on your level of pessimism.
But apps don't work for many people.
Women are not universally thrilled.
A big myth in the manosphere/incel spaces is that attractive men get showered with attention, despite putting in no effort.
The data here also indicate otherwise.
Attractive men message more.
Do you think men that put in effort to message more might also put in more effort to groom themselves and take good photos?
They are not sitting back, chilling, and getting female attention.
They are optimizing their app use.
This doesn't mean that if you're a 1/5 then a shower will make you a "Chad."
The point is that some people have a comical perception of how attractive men present themselves.
And how easy/hard dating is for attractive men.
Attractive men put in effort to compete.
A lot of discourse on "hypergamy" in the manosphere too - and it is always "female hypergamy."
You never see "male hypergamy."
Despite the fact men and women select for the most attractive people on apps at the same rate.
Men are not making hypogamous selections.
This is consistent with published research on dating apps, which also shows men and women value physical attractiveness the same.
Contrary to the narrative that men are selecting down.
Also based on actual messages:
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