Tinder themselves have released stats indicating that women are way more picky than men on apps like Tinder. A famous article on the OKcupid blog suggest that women rate most men as below average, supporting a notion that women are shallower.

However, experience from real life makes this notion absurd to me. In real life I usually have a very good shot at a woman who matches me on attractiveness, and sometimes a bit above. On tinder and in online dating in general I have to lower my standards substantially to get any sort of reciprocal interest.

One hypothesis would be that there are more men than women on Tinder(and such), so women can afford to be pickier. Another could be that since men are more generous with likes and messages, the value of women on these services are inflated.

However, I've watched female friends of mine use Tinder, and there are no clear signs that they're being extremely picky on looks. What they're being extremely picky on is the presentation of the guy. They usually pick men with very professional looking photos of interesting situations, and almost every single one of them has one or more horror stories from meeting a guy who didn't look anything like his photos, and had absolutely no social skills outside of the online messages.

When I look at profiles, I do the complete opposite. If every photo is a professional looking one or a selfie, that's a red flag - you have no idea what that person actually looks like.

So men and women of PPD - discuss your experience. Am I onto something?