How do guys really act when rejected?
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My girlfriends and I have a private Facebook group where we exchange Tinder horror stories. And we’re not the only ones.
Women from all over the Internet submit to ByeFelipe, an Instagram account with over 300,000 followers that calls out guys who turn hostile when they get rejected or ignored.
We hear these horror stories all the time. How common is this kind of behavior? We decided to find out.
So we built a Tinder robot using pictures from our friend Lisa Winning (CEO of HeTexted).
The robot right-swiped on 1,000 profiles of men in San Francisco and another 1,000 in New York City.
Over a thousand men messaged Lisa. Since this was a robot and not actually her, none of the guys received any responses. We were afraid they’d become hostile after being ignored, like we’d seen on ByeFelipe so many times before.
Out of 1,007 men who messaged Lisa, how many would you guess turned hostile?
Zero.
Over a thousand men messaged her and were ignored. And not a single one turned hostile.
That’s pretty impressive.
Just about everyone who messaged her was friendly and respectful. Sure, there was teasing, guys who were straightforward about their intention to hook up, and plenty of bad pickup lines. But no one became hostile or resorted to name-calling.
After scrolling through all these messages, we started to feel bad about the experiment. Here these guys were putting genuine effort into getting to know her, but she was just a robot. They took the time to ask her meaningful questions. Many of them even Googled her company (which was listed in her profile) in an effort to make conversation.
So if these Tinder horror stories are so common, how come we didn’t find a single one among over a thousand messages?
It’s like shark attacks. We hear about them in the news every summer, but only 5 people a year die of shark attacks.
It’s the negative stories that get all the attention. Stories about men being decent and polite just aren’t as interesting as the stories of men being jerks. But here it is. Evidence that the vast majority of guys are actually pretty decent.
For every asshole, there are a thousand invisible gentlemen.
If you could run an experiment on Tinder, what would you want to find out? Email your ideas to karenxcheng (at) gmail (dot) com
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Originally published on Medium.com
Data and analysis by Paul Mestemaker, written by Karen X. Cheng
Paul Mestemaker runs CleverPoint, a technology consulting company based in San Francisco. He initially started playing with the Tinder API back in September 2014.
Karen X. Cheng makes viral videos and does viral media and brand consulting for companies.
Lisa Winning is the CEO of HeTexted, a platform for advice.
Note: The original purpose of the experiment was entirely different. A friend mentioned she got fewer matches when she mentioned she’s a CEO. Presumably, because men are intimidated or turned off by strong women. After right-swiping on 1,000 profiles with her CEO job title and 1,000 profiles without, we found: it makes no difference at all.
What an interesting experiment. It’s interesting to note that the original purpose was quite different to the stated purpose in the article. Both experiments would be interesting to conduct. It’s also intriguing to note that the lack of hostility to being ignored by a CEO is “impressive”. Would you say the same if a female was ignored by a male CEO and didn’t turn hostile? It would be interesting to also see the responses when the initiator (man/woman) is rejected in different ways. This one has tested for the old “ignore him and he’ll go away” tactic. What about other… Read more »
Yep, Kelly.
I dont deny those things go on, but is it a good enough reason to tar all of us with the same brush?
One hostile man is an indictment on the male gender
Just going by the title of the article… how terrible do the editors here think we think men are?
Frankly, my personal experience “reveals” to me, men in general are not terrible at all.
I would be curious to know if you read every single message. The idea of the experiment is novel, but I don’t think it reflects the true female experience on dating sites in general. Try politely turning a guy down. Most of the time they understand, but sometimes they get hostile. Very rarely will a guy get hostile if I just don’t respond. What about all the vulgar messages that ask for oral sex, or ask for you to come over right away, as if they are ordering you like a prostitute? That is the real experience I have had… Read more »
@ kelly
So are you still on Tinder? It’s not like walking to work or home on the street. If you have multiple bad experiences, why would you stay?
A good experiment would be to do the opposite. Pretend to be a man (average Joe, not a hunk) and swipe right 1000 times. For every match send a short but respectful message. See how many women message back and how many simply block the match.
I would not want to run any experiment on Tinder. I’ve been reading so much about all those experiments lately, it seems to be a fashion. E.g. the woman who endeavored to pay off her premium membership by letting scores of men she was not even interested in pay for her dinners – she was successful too. There were other experiments which escape my recollection. I am beginning to be kind of scared to use a platform like Tinder – I don’t want to put the best of my creativity and hopes into texting an experimental robot. Or a fake… Read more »