It’s a question that plagues today’s dating market. Online dating is the #1 way people meet in 2024, yet 50% of men receive essentially 0 matches.

Why is this? Well, I decided to investigate.

Do women really not like average guys or is there something else going on here?

My Experiment

To find out why men get so few matches on dating apps I created a profile as a woman on the most widely used dating app in the world, Tinder. I then let 100 likes come in before pausing the profile(which only took 30 minutes, you guys are thirsty lol). I used Tinder Gold so I could see the likes, then recorded the data on what the male dating market really looks like on Tinder.

I split the mens profiles into 5 categories

1. Getting enough matches that they could get at least one date a week with a good text funnel.

2. Getting some matches but not enough that they could consistently get dates even with a good text funnel, but could with better photos.

3. Is not getting any matches but could with just better photos.

   

4. Is not getting any matches but could with proper looksmaxxing(mostly just grooming and lower bodyfat) and better photos.

   

5. Likely wouldn’t get any matches due to poor looks genetics, even with looksmaxxing and better photos.

I was going to add another category…

• Has good photos but poor looks leave them with few to no matches

But there was not a single person in this category. Everyone who had poor looks also had bad photos.

This was the distribution of the 5 categories across the 100 likes.

As expected only 4% of profiles were likely receiving enough matches to consistently get dates(if they had a good text funnel), with an additional 18% likely receiving some matches but not enough to consistently land dates even with a good text funnel.

The 80/20 Rule at play yet again. It’s pretty clear that 20% of guys are taking nearly all the likes/matches.

My takeaways from the experiment

The experiment led me to some rather unpopular conclusions.

1. The main reason most men get so few matches is… bad photos. Girls grew up taking selfies understanding their camera angles and what kind of photos look good. Men have absolutely no idea what a good photo looks like or how to take one. Every single profile had obvious profile flaws and there was one single profile that had across-the-board good pictures.
   

2. The second largest reason men get so few matches is they simply don’t take care of their appearance. There’s a large chunk of men who clearly have potential but are dragged down by being overweight or bad choice of haircut/glasses. Interestingly every man without a maxed-out appearance had a straight-up terrible choice of photos/profile quality.
   

3. The percentage of men who actually can’t succeed on dating apps is very small, by my approximation around 2%. I only placed guys in this category if they had clear unfixable aesthetic issues with their face and below-average height, which came out to only 2% of the 100 profiles.
   

4. Within the current dating market physical attractiveness is the trait highest correlated with quantity of matches… but that’s only because almost everyone takes bad pictures. When you have bad photos physical attractiveness becomes the only way to stand out.

What can you take away from this?

The main takeaway from this experiment is that dating apps aren’t broken or tailored against average guys… guys just suckkkkkkk at using them.

I can’t emphasize this enough. Only 8% had by my approximation a single great quality photo on their profile(think the dog photo of the guy in category one), and 96% of guys had multiple bad photos in their profile(think every photo the guys in categories 3-5 had).

Next week I’ll be diving into exactly what makes a good profile/photos, and how many likes you can get as an average guy with a good profile, so look out for that next Thursday.

As usual, let me know what you think in the poll below, I read every comment.

Move me to the primary inbox, reply to this email, and I’ll see you next Thursday.