Hacker News

I do not want AI to "polish" me

2025-01-2913:50415263thebloggess.com

I was sending an email when a little magic wand popped up that said “Polish” and I thought that was weird because why would I want to translate my email into Polish? I tried to click on…

I was sending an email when a little magic wand popped up that said “Polish” and I thought that was weird because why would I want to translate my email into Polish?

I tried to click on it to make it go away but instead it changed the entire email because apparently it was saying that it needed to “polish” my email because I guess I’m too unsophisticated to use words:

There is no way in hell anyone who knows me would get that email and not think I’d been abducted so I deleted the suggested rewrite and updated my email:

But after I added the update gmail was like, “YOU’RE STILL DOING IT WRONG, IDIOT?” and the polish thing came up again and I was like, “Are you trying to AI fix a paragraph where I say how much I don’t want AI to fix shit?” And turns out, yeah, that exactly what it meant because it gave me this:

Jesus. Y’all, if you get an email from me it will be signed with HUGS, LOVE, FIGHT THE PATRIARCHY, DOWN WITH POWDERED GRAVY or SORRY I SUCK SO MUCH. It will be filled with typos and rambling parentheticals and apologies for answering several months too late. This is how you know it’s me and not a robot. My only hope is that my constant declining of the suggestions will make the AI learn from me and spread my terrible etiquette throughout the world.

Also, I just realized when I tried to insert these pictures into this blog about how much I hate AI my blog was suddenly like, “HEY I KNOW YOU JUST CLICKED A BUTTOM SAYING YOU WANT TO ADD A SPECIFIC PICTURE BUT HOW ABOUT WE JUST MAKE AI IMAGES FOR YOU INSTEAD?” AM I ON CANDID CAMERA? It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something.

And as much as I hate AI, I had to see what the program thought it could do so much better than me so I gave it the prompt “please stop giving me AI” and…all apologies. Clearly I did need help because…fucking wow. Nailed it:

Anyway…this sucks.

Worst regards,

Jenny


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Comments

  • By flatline 2025-01-2914:304 reply

    > It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something.

    Every autocorrect or auto suggestion ever has felt like this to me, but the volume has been turned up to 11. The otherwise drab Adobe Reader is covered with colorful sparkly buttons and popups suggesting I need not even read the document because it can give me “insights.” First, no you may not ready my proprietary document, nor do I suspect most people using this particular software - I only have it for digital signatures - have permission to share IP with a third party. But mostly, it can sometimes be a useful tool, and the fact everyone is shoving it in my face reeks of desperation.

    The tech industry is in real trouble.

    • By rsynnott 2025-01-2916:289 reply

      Thing is, we've been here before in a much more limited way; people _hated_ it when Microsoft's demonic paperclip did this in Office. "It looks like you're writing a letter". _Hated_ it.

      It is unclear what the industry thinks has changed, that people will now welcome "It looks like you're [whatever]".

      • By jorgeleo 2025-01-2916:563 reply

        The people. The people changed.

        This forum (HN) attracts certain population that wants to do things, to understand, to share relatively well based opinions and have a discussion.

        But look around, look at the new hires in the other departments. And by new I mean young, in their 20. A lot of them welcome this kind of things, they evaluate by popularity and likes. The marketing begin the AI bubble knows this, and so it pushes for it. Make it popular is more important than make it useful, because there is a tipping point were is popular enough that we capitulate.

        Turns out that Idiocracy is not that far behind (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/)

        • By rsynnott 2025-01-2917:03

          Did they, though? Polling fairly consistently shows that people don’t _like_ this stuff, and there’s some evidence that the more familiar with it they become the less they like it. I think Microsoft et al were betting on people liking it (that was certainly their thinking with Clippy, too) but that doesn’t seem to be working out for them.

        • By smegger001 2025-01-2923:09

          My sister is ripping her hair out dealing with the interns at he job being extremely tech illiterate with anything thats not app-ified. Many don't know what files are, and are needing run through computer basics because everything they have used has anything technical abstracted away. The post-iPhone generation just wants there hand held and anything technical scares them. Microsoft Bob was just too ahead of the curve.

        • By normalaccess 2025-01-2917:071 reply

          Not only have the people changed but it is the belief of the elites at the top that humanity is entering a new era of hack-ability. They want to use these AI systems to rewrite humanity into their vision of the future.

          Yuval Noah Harari talking about how the new "gods" are the data-centers and how free will is dead in the age of AI. https://youtu.be/QuL3wlodJC8

          • By encipriano 2025-01-2918:201 reply

            When was free will proven to be a thing to begin with

            • By normalaccess 2025-01-2919:11

              Well, for the purpose of this conversation the people at the top of the food chain believe free will exists. They also believe that they can eliminate it with AI and Biomedical manipulation.

      • By soerxpso 2025-01-2920:20

        The goal with most of these AI features is not to solve a real problem users are having, it's to add a feature that uses AI. This will not change because it's not wrong of the individuals making the decision. The project manager gets to say he shipped a cutting-edge AI project. The developers all get to put experience working with very hireable technologies at a serious company on their resume. There will be no adverse impact to the bottom line, because the cost to develop the shitty AI feature is a drop in the bucket, and the cost to create a competing product that accomplishes the core thing users are using that product for but without feature bloat would be very high, and probably unsuccessful since "less feature bloat" has never been sufficient to break the static friction threshold for users to switch.

        So it won't change, because there is no lesson to learn. No individual involved acted irrationally.

      • By the_snooze 2025-01-2916:394 reply

        It's a design that's in companies' best interests. You can have a computer that's a "friend." One that you trust but ultimately has a mind of its own. This contrasts with a computer that's merely a tool, that serves you exclusvely at your pleasure and has zero agency of its own.

        Which approach gives companies more control over users? Which one allows companies to sell that access to the highest bidder?

        • By rsynnott 2025-01-2916:451 reply

          Based on the experience of 20 years ago, though, users are _extremely_ turned off by it. There's little reason to think this has changed (if anything it is likely more pronounced because Clippy came in kinda without baggage, whereas LLMs have a lot of baggage and most of it ain't great).

          > It's a design that's in companies' best interests.

          I really don't think it is. Clippy was reputationaly damaging to Microsoft and they had to get rid of it. There's little reason to think this will be different.

          • By the_snooze 2025-01-2916:55

            Modern Big Tech doesn't particularly care what users think. They know they have network effects on their side and that switching costs are high. So what if it's "reputationally damaging?" What are users going to do? They're just resources to be exploited. Microsoft, Google, and their ilk can treat users with contempt if it means more control and more shareholder value.

        • By singleshot_ 2025-01-2917:07

          Third option: the computer is your enemy, which will follow any sufficiently clever adversary’s orders.

          Thinking of a computer as a tool seems reasonable, but thinking of your computer as your friend is clownish (which, I think you agree with based on your last comment).

        • By LoganDark 2025-01-2918:18

          > You can have a computer that's a "friend."

          Slightly offtopic, but I have a friend with synesthesia who sees inanimate objects like people, and they call their computer "macbook friend" (since it's a MacBook Air).

        • By giancarlostoro 2025-01-2917:28

          > but ultimately has a mind of its own

          Kind of. Ask a Chinese AI about Tianament Square historical military events.

      • By dspillett 2025-01-2917:241 reply

        Clippy (and his predecessors, he wasn't one of the first avatars for the feature) might not have been so bad, but marketing got hold of it and decided it didn't pop up often enough for them to really make a big thing of, so it was tuned up to an irritating level.

        > It is unclear what the industry thinks has changed

        The demographics of computer (and other device) use have changed massively since the late 90s, and the suggestion engines are much more powerful.

        I still want it all to take a long walk off a short peer, but a lot of people seem happy with it bothering them.

        • By timewizard 2025-01-2917:291 reply

          I remember when software would ask you on first start what your level of experience was. "Novice, Intermediate, Expert" and would tune the UI to respect that.

          • By dspillett 2025-01-3011:18

            Sometimes different modes like that can be more hassle than they are worth, from the dev point of view. You can end up with many more paths to test in order to try make sure your product is bug free.

      • By hibikir 2025-01-2917:55

        If the automation is much better at the task than I am, then I am happy to donate it the responsibility: It's a matter of accuracy. Clippy kind of sucked even when he was right about what I was trying to do. For many things, the LLMs are getting good enough to outperform me

      • By kjkjadksj 2025-01-2917:051 reply

        The customer base for computing has expanded probably 3 or 4 fold or more from those windows xp days in the US. Maybe for the subset of the population that was word processing back then it was annoying. But now we are looking at a different pie entirely where that subset of annoyed power users is but a tiny sliver. There are people today who have no experience even with a desktop os.

        • By rsynnott 2025-01-2917:571 reply

          This wasn’t the dark ages; in highly developed countries the ‘computer in every desk’ thing had just about come true. I doubt there are that many more regular word processor users now than in the late clippy era, at least in the developed world.

      • By fragmede 2025-01-2916:53

        Thing is, Gmail's been doing this ~forever with quick replies to emails, now it's just doing longer replies instead of "that's great, thanks" level of replies.

      • By user9925 2025-01-2917:33

        Kind of silly to compare LLMs to clippy...

      • By eithed 2025-01-2917:22

        But clippy didn't write the letter for me = if I can be lazy and AI formats what I'm communicating in a way that is accessible to other people, then why should I care.

    • By Rendello 2025-01-2916:241 reply

      After a recent Show HN, I got an email from someone saying that they'd set up a page for my 'product' on their product showcase startup site. I followed the link and saw my open-source project pitched as ChatGPT slop. It felt like a violation because it wasn't just an aggregated link, but a rewrite of my readme with an associated 'pitch'.

      • By CharlesW 2025-01-2917:032 reply

        I recommend reporting this to dang at hn@ycombinator.com. I imagine that he'd be interested in someone crawling HN in order to send automated lead generation spam.

        • By bityard 2025-01-2917:241 reply

          I don't think dang can do anything about it, I'm sure HN gets scraped all the time. I routinely get spam from cryptocurrency startups to (obfuscated) email addresses I have posted on HN years ago on "Who Wants to be Hired" threads, and from my commit messages on github.

          • By jrockway 2025-01-2917:431 reply

            Github is definitely quite the source of spam. I ended up realizing that when I was tired of having two .gitconfigs with two email addresses (work/personal) and switched to just putting my @users.noreply.github.com in there. No more spam.

            (Plus I get to show off my 4 digit Github userid. I was the 2367th person to sign up! ;)

            • By bityard 2025-01-2921:14

              Neat. I was pretty late to the party and have a userid halfway into the 6 digits, but somehow I got extremely lucky and landed a two-character username (my initials).

        • By jrockway 2025-01-2917:41

          I get a ton of emails from people on HN and I dunno, it's really my fault for putting my email in my profile. I don't blame HN for this; I don't think it's particularly supportive of this kind of "abuse".

    • By sneak 2025-01-2914:454 reply

      Somehow I don’t have this problem with notepad.exe or vim or pandoc or imagemagic or textedit.app or resolve or blender.

      Maybe it isn’t the tech industry, and just consumer-facing apps.

      • By layer8 2025-01-2915:022 reply

      • By XorNot 2025-01-2914:492 reply

        Open source has been looking better and better lately because it's not in a mad rush to bolt "AI" features onto it (an LLM will do something) and then shove a huge amount of interface in your face to try to get you to use it.

        On some level it's enormously baffling that this was the thing they decided they needed to do...conversely Adobe Reader on my phone won't shutup about liquid mode either (which uploads to Adobe servers) and Microsoft and Google's solution to "people don't want to use our AI assistants" was to ensure they literally can't be disabled or removed.

        • By halostatue 2025-01-2918:29

          I will simply point you to the iTerm2 AI kerfuffle (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40458135) as proof that some in open source _are_ in a mad rush to bolt on completely unnecessary "features".

          It was a bad choice that never should have been implemented as "enabled but not configured", and I have moved away from iTerm2 as a result. I am sure that others have as well. (The grudging move to make it a separately downloadable plugin was good, but too late IMO.)

        • By immibis 2025-01-2922:55

          One of the rare times when the slow pace of open source innovation is actually a benefit, because all innovation that's occurring is making things worse.

      • By passwordoops 2025-01-2915:00

        Consumer-facing apps are made by the tech industry, so it is and industry problem

      • By almostnormal 2025-01-2916:14

        Notepad is attempting to fix spelling without asking.

    • By pjc50 2025-01-2914:343 reply

      > no you may not ready my proprietary document, nor do I suspect most people using this particular software - I only have it for digital signatures - have permission to share IP with a third party.

      This is a massive liability that almost everybody seems to be ignoring. My employer has a ban on using AI on IP until this is properly resolved, because we actually care about it leaking.

      Maybe an Information Commissioner will get round to issuing a directive some time in the mid-2030s about how none of this complies with GDPR.

      • By mrweasel 2025-01-2915:461 reply

        > My employer has a ban on using AI on IP until this is properly resolved, because we actually care about it leaking.

        Yet I can almost guarantee you that someone has put something they shouldn't through ChatGPT, because they either feel like it's a dumb rule, that should not apply to them, or they where in a hurry and what are the odds of them getting caught.

        • By dzamo_norton 2025-01-3017:46

          Oh we can have something stronger than almost a guarantee, I have first hand anecdotes of documents from the financial services sector being fed to ChatGPT for polishing. They weren't trade secrets but their classifications were INTERNAL, _and higher_.

      • By UweSchmidt 2025-01-2915:14

        I think in general, no major liability issue will come up:

        - if everyone is doing it, you can't really fault anyone

        - on some level we are, or will be, kinda dependent on that AI and opting out will probably be made unpleasant via dark patterns as usual

        - no pushback to every piece of software, including at the operating system level, slurping all the keystrokes and data, let alone the data that's already in the cloud - big tech knows everything about us but to my surprise no major public leak has happened, i.e. one where you really can see your neighbor's private data without buying leaked data from someone on the dark web or wherever

        - things are moving too fast, and you don't know if you can afford to have your programmers not use tomorrow's AI, for example, so your "bans" will have to be soft etc., this limits the potential pushback and outrage

      • By maddmann 2025-01-2916:16

        A blanket ban on ai seems like shooting yourself in the foot. What about local models, on prem, or using private azure instances?

  • By burkaman 2025-01-2914:345 reply

    Obviously the AI version is bland and terrible, but arguably more importantly it has also completely changed the meaning of the message. The AI version:

    - apologizes

    - implies the recipient was "promised" this email as a "response" to something

    - blames a hectic schedule

    - invites questions

    None of this was in or was even implied in the original. This is not a "polished" version, it's just a straight-up different email. I thought that style transfer while maintaining meaning was one of the few things LLMs can be good at, but this example fails even that low bar.

    • By cmrdporcupine 2025-01-2914:584 reply

      The AI has some ... "ideas" ... of its own on what workplace relationships apparently need to be like.

      • By escapecharacter 2025-01-2915:342 reply

        A lot of people who want to replace most human interactions with LLMs assume that there is some objective set of cultural values true in all contexts, and that it is good and easy to encode these as axioms into an AI.

        • By tclancy 2025-01-2916:07

          Yes. As an Old now (GenX), I feel like moving all interactions to text and now having AI as a man in the middle is just reinventing ways to get in a situation where a decade down the line you reconnect with someone who used to be a friend and both discover "Hey, that wasn't what I meant at all!"

          As ever, T.S. Eliot was right: "It is impossible to say just what I mean!"

        • By rsynnott 2025-01-2916:331 reply

          And those objective set of cultural values are, apparently... a sort of parody of 90s corporate culture, a sort of polite version of Michael Scott. Like, no-one ever _actually_ wrote like LLMs tend to write; it reads as a parody of a now slightly obsolete corporate-speak.

      • By bunderbunder 2025-01-2916:271 reply

        Have you read the papers on how they optimize these LLMs for demeanor?

        AI exists in a Matrix where toxic positivity is enforced with electric shocks.

        • By cmrdporcupine 2025-01-3019:59

          It's the California Ideology, now written into a program.

          When I was at Google this tone was so pervasive that we had "CongratBot" to make fun of this stuff, and Memegen to somewhat counteract it.

          But Silly Valley is the poster-child for "hey don't be a downer" communications vibes.

          As the child of a super-critical German father, it always seems insincere to me.

      • By nicbou 2025-01-2916:531 reply

        And those ideas seem far more in line with millenial Silicon Valley culture. It's weird when they expect Germans to fake that sort of overly formal, overly cheery tone. People just don't talk like that.

        • By cmrdporcupine 2025-01-3020:01

          Yeah, my father is German, and I'm Canadian, but of a .. grouchy ... variety. This kind of business culture has never really fit with me. But it's how the people with the $$ speak.

    • By polynomial 2025-01-2914:57

      Correct. This is called the production of subjectivity.

      (tyrna be funny not patronizing. but the machinery of subjectivity production is ofc very real)

    • By yawnxyz 2025-01-2915:481 reply

      this is like when my manager once yelled at me for not writing in corp speak enough

      • By Freak_NL 2025-01-2916:521 reply

        “OK Fine. But could you at least yell at me in corp speak?”

        It's no surprise LLMs are using corp speak and vapid marketing prose as a template. There is so much of it out there.

        This is from that Autodesk post last week where they admitted their mistake and… Nope it's corp speak:

        “We are excited to share some important updates regarding Archiving and our Idea Boards and Forums that aim to enhance your experience and ensure valuable content remains accessible. Please read the details below to understand how these changes might impact you.”

        Barf. But to an LLM this looks like a human communicating in a meaningful way.

        • By nicbou 2025-01-2916:55

          > Look, we need to align on language here. If you’re not speaking in scalable, results-driven terminology, you’re slowing down the team. We don’t “talk about things”—we sync and strategize. We don’t “try something new”—we leverage data-driven insights to drive innovation.

    • By retropragma 2025-01-2915:332 reply

      It's just shitty prompt design

      • By mronetwo 2025-01-2916:50

        Well... that's a very 2025 sentence...

      • By summermusic 2025-01-2916:02

        No, it's because the AI makes shit up. No amount of prompting will fix this.

  • By bloomingkales 2025-01-2914:175 reply

    There is no way in hell anyone who knows me would get that email and not think I’d been abducted

    This person cares about not putting up a fake identity. That's pretty cool, but social media has exposed that a large number of people are perfectly fine presenting an illusion. People will have no shame passing off well written things as an output of their talent and hard work. Digital makeup has no bounds.

    • By vikramkr 2025-01-2915:15

      If you care about putting up a fake identity this is still bad. Social media is all about being distinct and grabbing attention. Getting samified into a bland featureless identity isn't the same as as carefully crafting a persona to maximize clicks

    • By ragazzina 2025-01-2915:075 reply

      > People will have no shame passing off well written things as an output of their talent and hard work.

      Sometimes I don't want to waste my time crafting a professional e-mail to a bunch of jerks full of themselves. Maybe I want to write it as it comes off my brain, and let my digital scribe to reformulate it so that the people reading it feel respected/validated/flattered. Am I putting up a fake identity then? Am I presenting an illusion of professionalism? Maybe writing "Best regards" instead of "Bye" is the facade of professionalism in the first place.

      • By finnthehuman 2025-01-2915:31

        > Am I putting up a fake identity then?

        When you did it manually you were putting up a fake identify. ofc using an AI to fake you being fake for work would be fake.

        The idea that our work personas aren't at least a little fake is toxic. Depending on where you work it might be a lot fake.

        Wear your character as lightly as a cap, don't get tricked into method acting.

      • By fragmede 2025-01-2917:01

        "Best Regards" vs "Bye" is one thing, but unless you're the owner of the company, sending a client "fuck you, pay me" just isn't professional and is probably going to get you fired.

      • By ceejayoz 2025-01-2915:11

        I mean, I hear that. I was asked to be "nicer" in emails once, and when pressed for specific changes, was finally asked to occasionally say "Thanks!" as my sign-off instead of "Thanks,".

        The "bunch of jerks full of themselves" likely aren't reading the emails now; we're burning immense amounts of energy for your politeness to be generated, and distilled out at the other end into a no-nonsense summary missing all the niceties another AI just added.

      • By djeastm 2025-01-2915:26

        It's obviously a personal thing, but I even feel a little guilty clicking the autosuggested "thanks" when responding to a text. Everyone has the threshold they're comfortable with.

      • By codr7 2025-01-2915:59

        I see no problem, assholes deserve bullshit.

    • By boneitis 2025-01-2916:41

      With the normalization of default workflow to chuck all comms through an LLM filter settling in these days, I don't think it's even people trying to pass off illusions as their own persona. All it takes is a copy-paste and hitting the Make-Me-Some-Text button. I'm sure the responses will be frustratingly amusing if you were to press them and call them out on it (including trying to pass off the illusion).

      Many people didn't think about what they are trying to convey (or self-analysed how they present themselves) when drafting correspondence in the past; now, many people think just as not-hard and often continue, like before, to neglect to meaningfully proofread whatever they had the LLMs generate for them before hitting Send.

      Of course, I don't like it. But in some ways, it's just not a whole lot different from what it was before in that you can often still tell apart the people who care to be articulate from those who don't. Though, I feel bad for people disproportionately waylaid by the new paradigm like the bug/security responders on the curl project.

    • By WaitWaitWha 2025-01-2916:32

      indeed!

      At a high level I see convergence of styles, topics, behaviors to a generic form, both in "AI" and social media. Which to me suggest that the "AI" solutions are doing exactly what we would do ourselves, just faster.

    • By oglop 2025-01-2914:287 reply

      [flagged]

      • By DontchaKnowit 2025-01-2915:02

        Speak for yourself dawg, you sound miserable. Were not all that way

      • By BizarreByte 2025-01-2915:18

        Why such a hostile response to someone who cares about presenting themselves in a way they see fit? Your image is very important and it's logical that they want to control theirs.

      • By pjc50 2025-01-2914:322 reply

        The whole AI discussion reminds me of David Graeber's "bullshit jobs" book. If the content doesn't matter, why not have an AI generate something polite and meaningless? Why not save effort managing your inbox full of meaningless emails by having the AI summarize them? It might lose some of the details, but they didn't matter. And so more and more of the white collar world gets replaced by AI .. until it actually disrupts away all the bullshit jobs entirely.

        Edit: comments describing exactly this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42865225

        • By layer8 2025-01-2915:071 reply

          If the content doesn’t matter, why do anything to it?

          • By raincole 2025-01-2915:47

            Because the person who realized it doesn't matter isn't in a position to eliminate it.

        • By psunavy03 2025-01-2915:481 reply

          It amuses me how everyone always thinks someone else has the "bullshit job."

          • By kkarakk 2025-01-2916:23

            natural consequence of jobs optimising for productivity but actually abstracting all power to some mythical C suite job.

      • By bloomingkales 2025-01-2914:313 reply

        You have to look at it holistically.

        This is the current modern Human:

        1. Born into the beast, enters social media by 5-7 years old

        2. All math and writing is done for you (becoming illiterate)

        3. You don't have to spell ever again (becoming illiterate)

        4. You cultivate a virtual persona since childhood (becoming vain)

        5. Did your life really happen if it wasn't posted online (the digital existentialist crisis -- do you even exist if you aren't part of the hive?)

        Then add more shit to this like, I dunno, no jobs, swipe left and right to find your soul mate ...

        Yeah and then you finally get ... you and me, the whole fuck it, I don't care anymore.

        Feeding apathy with AI will not end well, we have to care. Look at our kids today, we screwed them.

        • By rapnie 2025-01-2915:00

          Keiichi Matsuda, HYPER REALITY

          http://hyper-reality.co/

        • By mavhc 2025-01-2914:424 reply

          The old human:

          1. Born into plague 2. Never learns maths or writing 3. Nor spelling 4. Half the time your life ends before childhood does 5. Nothing happens in your life

          • By AyyEye 2025-01-2915:131 reply

            I can't believe that people unironically believe that humans lived unfulfilling lives until mass consumerism started. Incredible.

            Just because we don't know what daily life looked like doesn't mean "nothing happened".

            • By cmrdporcupine 2025-01-3020:04

              Nevermind that "nothing happening" sounds positively amazing, especially if my surroundings were a bucolic river side European village.

              Farm work done? Picked all my parasites out of my hair and clothes? Now to settle down for the very-zen "sit by the fire, sing some peasant songs and do nothing" -- sounds amazing

          • By yoyohello13 2025-01-2915:411 reply

            Maybe we can have modern medicine AND no social media.

          • By cmrdporcupine 2025-01-2914:56

            Yes, because those are clearly the only two choices.

          • By bloomingkales 2025-01-2914:44

            Touche.

            So what’s the takeaway, life a bitch and then you die?

        • By baq 2025-01-2914:432 reply

          > swipe left and right to find your soul mate ...

          > Women only like 4% of the men they see on the app.

          > Men like more than 60% of the women they see on the app.

          this ends with 20 women with the same soul mate and 19 men without any. you need to add

          > no kids, no grandkids

          to your litany.

          • By ebiester 2025-01-2915:003 reply

            There are alternate explanations here. Men do not put as much effort into their presentation as women do. Men are putting out profiles that show themselves as anti-woman, and that's unattractive. Men absolutely should be pickier - they would honestly only date people compatible with them, but try to cast the widest net rather than finding people they could vibe with.

            Men in the dating pool have become toxic, and women are doing their best to weed those out. Don't be toxic. Don't endorse people who are looking to make women's lives worse. Put effort into your presentation in your profile pictures - have a woman friend take them. Put effort into your profile to show that you are not someone who would endanger women - have other women in your life help you present your profile. (That probably means don't have a fishing photo, even if you enjoy fishing!)

            Much of this is predicated on having women in your life that you trust and that trust you, and who want to see you happy. This means listening to them and trusting them.

            And then, you might be a little pickier in your profile too.

            • By miningape 2025-01-2915:133 reply

              No matter how much polishing a man does to his appearance / profile the biological reality is that women are sought after and men have to compete for their attention. There's some statistic along the lines of "the average female has about as much 'pull' as a male A list celebrity"

              This means that women will receive far more attention from the opposite sex, and therefore have an "easier" time finding potential partners. This problem is just exacerbated by dating apps and social media making women more aware of their position and options - 100 years ago women could barely date outside their village. Nowadays they receive 100s of messages from men around the world competing for her attention. The opposite happens to men, they become more aware of how "undesired" they are so they start casting a wider net since no fish are caught in their smaller nets.

              Blaming the men here just reeks of those toxic standards - since again it is on the men to improve. Not the women who should continue being hyper selective (most attractive, wealthy, etc.).

              (Note I'm not blaming any side just showing the reality men face - really this is a problem both sexes need to tackle)

              "easier" is in quotes because I appreciate women have to filter out abusers and creeps. But from the male perspective they'd kill to even have a chance with an abuser or creep.

              • By bloomingkales 2025-01-2915:222 reply

                Is it so hard to believe that going onto a digital marketplace with an order of magnitude more humans than you would ever physically deal with physically is probably what's leading to a type of thalassophobia (the fear of deep or vast bodies of water)?

                Life is simple. He or she lived in the town, or your school, or was someone you pass by on the way to work daily. It's not some complicated digital dance where the universe presents to you all possible mates.

                Date the person you wouldn't. Give it a chance, because you just don't know how this love stuff happens.

                • By miningape 2025-01-2915:28

                  Completely agree - on top of the thalassophobia there’s also decision paralysis, and I’m not sure what you call it but: When you reject the good in hopes for something perfect down the line.

                • By ebiester 2025-01-2915:381 reply

                  So, if a man has a bad experience, they're out a few hundred bucks and a few hours, in general.

                  Ask a woman who trusts you about their worst experiences sometime.

                  • By bloomingkales 2025-01-2915:59

                    Safety is super important and I share your concern. I think online dating is similar to the internet. When the Internet started, there was a niche group that were really into it (early adopters). This was also true for dating apps in their infancy. It was safer simply because the pool was self selected (you had to be open minded to even try it).

                    Then the internet became for everyone and so did online dating. When there's that many people involved, things get more unsafe. It's not the same pool of early adopters on the same wavelength. It's everyone now, and everyone includes every wave length.

                    Stay safe!

              • By KittenInABox 2025-01-2915:241 reply

                In my experience women are not statistically hyper selective. The less selective women are just out of the dating pool faster than the hyper selective ones. A lot of the women I know are happy to marry a man who grooms himself, respects basic boundaries, and has income. A lot of religious women in particular are socially pressured to drop the "respects boundaries" category also.

                • By miningape 2025-01-2915:302 reply

                  I think this is mainly a problem with dating apps - I have seen what you're talking about myself when the pair meets "naturally" or are set up by mutual friends.

                  People are far more forgiving in real life than they are online.

                  But part of the problem here is that the dating apps are like junk food: easy, satisfying, but ultimately unhealthy. And unfortunately because of this ease a lot of people reach for them instead of doing the more difficult leg work.

                  But I can also see it from the female perspective: If almost everyone I swipe right on matches with me - I'd start becoming WAY more selective about who I swipe right on. This leads to less matches but now the guys are also getting even less matches but they can't so easily fix it. The only remedy for the males is to start swiping right on anything that you're not put off by. And again, the men doing this exacerbates the problem - a copulatory ouroboros if you will.

                  • By KittenInABox 2025-01-2916:221 reply

                    The female perspective is slightly different here. Like I said, the less selective women have already been out of the dating pool a long time. Additionally, women on dating apps experience additional pressure to be selective because men who are dangerous/abusive/predators stay in the dating pool longer. This is explicitly unfair to normal men, but normal men are also out of the dating pool faster on a statistical level. This means that a dating pool selects for more and more picky women, and more and more dangerous men thereby validating the selectivity of the existing women.

                    [This is not to say that there are not dangerous/abusive/predatory women. There certainly are. But one of the greatest causes of death of pregnant women is the father of the child-to-be murdering her, and one of the greatest causes of death of recently single women is their now-ex murdering her. There is no similar reciprocation i.e. one of the leading causes of death of fathers-to-be is not the mother-to-be murdering him. Maybe financial ruin in child support, but explicitly not death.]

                    • By miningape 2025-01-2916:321 reply

                      > men who are dangerous/abusive/predators stay in the dating pool longer

                      Not only this but they can use these apps to find their victims faster and easier than ever before.

                      > This is explicitly unfair to normal men

                      I think it's also unfair to women that they have to pick up the extra work that was done by the "community" before. And a loss for social cohesion too.

                      I am wondering though how someone who just ended a relationship could deal with this scenario? As a male you arguably look like one of the abusers because you're older and looking for a partner and as a female you're seen as less attractive. At the same time you're probably also more picky because of the break-up. Seems like they're the most shit-out-of-luck here regardless of what's between their legs.

                      I also wonder if this will push us towards being with our "high-school sweethearts" for longer than we would otherwise?

                      > Maybe financial ruin in child support, but explicitly not death.

                      Yeah absolutely, I'm personally not aware of the exact numbers for this but I wouldn't be shocked if you're right. Also I'd include things like false accusations, or getting her brothers/father to "take care of" the ex. Also we need to account for things like baby entrapment.

                      Also men tend to express their aggression physically whereas women tend to express it through reputation destruction. This also partially explains where we are today: women are afraid of male physical repercussions, men are afraid of female societal repercussions. Interestingly, it also mimics a lot of the rhetoric you see about "all males being bad" since it's a form of reputation destruction - whereas the male "comebacks" tend to focus on physical acts of violence that they "could do but won't".

                      • By KittenInABox 2025-01-2916:381 reply

                        > I think it's also unfair to women that they have to pick up the extra work that was done by the "community" before. And a loss for social cohesion too.

                        I would argue the community explicitly did not do the work of ousting predators. We are only in this generation or so no longer allowed to rape women if we're married to them. It is still legal for adults to marry children, not in an 18-to-17 way but a 38-to-15 way. Child marriages are overwhelmingly older-male-younger-female.

                        As for being with high-school sweethearts, that imo is also less and less likely, because more adults are forced to travel for employment (e.g. landing a job in a big city and moving).

                        • By miningape 2025-01-2916:531 reply

                          I'd like to clarify when I said "community" I wasn't talking exclusively about friend groups (or your mother's friend groups) helping with recommendations and whatnot. I mean the community as a whole - men and women, the bailiffs and the blacksmiths: When you know everyone in your town and most of the people in your neighbouring towns it becomes much easier to know who is a bad person that'll abuse you (or to find out that information).

                          • By KittenInABox 2025-01-2917:501 reply

                            Yes, I'm pushing back on that because in the past it explicitly legal and normal to abuse women. Women were not allowed to be selective in the first place. So the community explicitly did not perform the protection you are saying. It was only recently illegal to rape your wife.

                            • By miningape 2025-01-2918:291 reply

                              What I'm trying to say is that the people around us have always shaped who we pair up with - for better or worse - I think losing that is going to have consequences for social cohesion.

                              It's impossible to say who historically had it worse in general and I don't really believe such discussion is important except for historians. The only thing that dwelling on it will cause is resentment towards people who never perpetrated those crimes.

                              • By KittenInABox 2025-01-2920:19

                                You pointed out a historical inaccuracy I wished to correct. You were the one that brought up the past and then incorrectly depicted it. You're reading a little too much on this.

                  • By ebiester 2025-01-2915:361 reply

                    If you've been set up by mutual friends, that means you have someone vouch for you. That means you're more likely to be safe.

                    A bad experience for you is a bad couple of hours and a few hundred hours. Ask a woman, what is a bad experience for them?

                    • By miningape 2025-01-2915:411 reply

                      Again you're coming at this with such intense anti-male rhetoric - take a step back and look at the problems beyond your own.

                      Yes I completely agree women DO need to be more careful as they are far more vulnerable and men far more likely to take advantage.

                      HOWEVER, playing off bad experiences for men as "a bad couple of hours" is just disingenuous. Women can absolutely ruin a mans life and reputation in those "couple of hours" - even worse if they get married and she decides to take him to the cleaners.

                      Look, I'm not coming at this as some anti-women basher - I see a societal issue that is hurting our men, women, and future. If we want to actually solve that problem the way forward is not increasing the hatred towards men and isolationism of women. We need to come together and not push each other further apart.

                      • By taco_emoji 2025-01-2915:541 reply

                        Incredibly confused about what is "anti-male" about GP's post?

                        • By miningape 2025-01-2916:03

                          > A bad experience for you is a bad couple of hours and a few hundred hours. Ask a woman, what is a bad experience for them?

                          Playing the situation as though its 0% risk for men and 100% risk for women - making it seem as though only men can be harmful and they are by nature dangerous. Making it sound like no male has ever had a bad experience with women and the onus is completely on the males to fix this situation.

                          Meanwhile the only men who will listen to this advice are the ones who are already "safe" for women.

                          Probably the word "intense" shouldn't have been used by me and maybe I'm reading into it too deep.

              • By ebiester 2025-01-2915:441 reply

                I think it's instructive to sit down with a woman who trusts you and watch how they evaluate dating profiles. It was certainly eye-opening for me.

                Your biggest competition is not the other men on the app. It's "do you make their life better than being alone?"

                • By miningape 2025-01-2915:491 reply

                  > It's "do you make their life better than being alone?"

                  This is a really lovely sentiment and I wish more people approached it like this. I've never set up a dating profile and I don't plan to. But hiding stuff like fish pictures seems a bit over the top, surely if fishing is one of your passions you'd want to end up with someone who at least doesn't judge you for it.

                  Also keep in mind this approach of making sure your dating profile is "optimised" only works until a large enough %age of men's profiles are "optimised" - then its back to square 1 to figure out how to optimise it further to put yourself at the front of the queue again. We've seen what the SEO arms race has done to search engines, do we really want to do the same thing for dating?

                  • By ebiester 2025-01-2915:57

                    You absolutely can put it in your hobbies!

                    The issue is that you rarely look your best in those pictures, and unless you are explicitly looking to date someone who loves to fish, you aren't showing them how they would integrate into your life.

            • By throw_pm23 2025-01-2915:17

              > (That probably means don't have a fishing photo, even if you enjoy fishing!)

              not a good start to a relationship :)

            • By codr7 2025-01-2915:31

              Or don't, leave the games to the fucking morons and get a life.

          • By KittenInABox 2025-01-2915:20

            This is assuming all women and all men are equal parties here in terms of candidate quality. I've used these apps and men are not socialized to present themselves in a visual medium the way women are. I'm not talking men should be putting on makeup, but a shocking number of men don't understand grooming their facial hair to fit their face shape, framing a photo of themselves, etc.

      • By sneak 2025-01-2914:411 reply

        My work is running a business where I sell my time and skills.

        If I don’t bring my identity, I don’t make sales. My business is an extension of who I am (and my decades of experience).

        My identity helps customers understand that. It’s part of a brand story.

        • By layer8 2025-01-2915:101 reply

          I was with you until you mentioned “brand”. You don’t need your identity to be a “brand”. Even more, it tends to be detrimental, because “story” implies inauthenticity.

          • By pietrrrek 2025-01-2915:43

            A story is just a sequence of events, it does not necessarily have to be fictional (i.e. inauthentic).

      • By taco_emoji 2025-01-2915:44

        Uh sounds like you need therapy, not an AI personality makeover

      • By sieabahlpark 2025-01-2914:37

        [dead]

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