Duolicious – Open-source dating app

Duolicious: where the men are men and so are the women.

Considering the target demographic, a lot of the "women" probably used to be, too

I think structurally this is a good idea and would budge the numbers a bit.

Realistically, it's not a perfect solution, because things being what they are, even the women who themselves are:

> Duolicious is the dating app that helps you find your Discord-lurking, Reddit-updooting, Nigerian-basketweaving-forum-posting, chronically-online soulmate. Our fun personality quiz helps you meet like-minded people, and shows you a new match for every answer you give, thanks to our fancy matching algorithm.

Listen, creepy guys online are a thing. A huge thing, massive. If I was lady, even though I am a terminally online type of person, I would absolutely not use a site which specifically promised to data mine the comments section for people to date.

I see this a lot in Japan for language exchange parties. Foreigners pay the least, then Japanese women, then Japanese men.

I can tell you that as a cis-male, there are many people that sign up for apps like Tinder that represent themselves either incorrectly, don't fit into the filters that are available, or gender themselves in a way that don't mesh well with cis-for-cis relationships. I hope that doesn't come off as harsh or hateful, because it absolutely isn't. I feel like a lot of non-cis people are subjected to a lot of unnecessary hate and/or miscommunication because of the way most apps work. I might be a cis-male, but I don't want to see anyone hurt or hated on for their sexual preferences. I'm not overly PC, but nobody deserves hate or violence, especially from a dating app that can't tailor itself to match with the right type of person.

I know I rambled, but my point was that charging women or men different fees is going to create even more confusion or outright lying to save a dollar. Things are already in a pretty grey area on dating apps as they already are.

I think that this is a poor strategy in general if you actually want to "solve" online dating. From the women's perspective, men who are willing to spend money for a dating app are probably not more desirable than average, unless you raise the price so high (probably around $1k) it becomes a meaningful proxy for wealth, and even then that's a narrow market that is already saturated. The buzz about dating apps on male-dominated websites is that the experience for men there is bad (because few women), but a textbook microeconomic analysis insists that the experience must be worse for women, because otherwise they would use the app! The app UX is mostly a function of the opposite-gender userbase, so your options are constrained: you might restrict the pool of men by charging, but you consequently make the app less interesting to women, which foils your attempt to balance the gender ratio.

I could ramble further about how I think this happens and what to do about it, but there is one caveat: I have never — hopefully will never — used any dating apps. I rely entirely on what I've read from other people and my own limited understanding of economics and psychology.

That actually is illegal! Our local California restaurant has been (successfully) sued for having "ladies nights out" where they provided discount drinks for ladies: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/31/business/ladies-night-lawsuit...

No, because that's illegal sex-discrimination.

I think only active-straight-cis-men and active-straight-cis-women are looking for things like open source dating site alternatives to the mainstream sites. Other groups aren't in this market, so to speak. Either they have apps & sites they don't need alternatives to, or they rely on the local community.

I suspect the others are (on average) too self-centered to be serious about dating although some might put on a show as if they were.

I'm not sure what would constitute ethical versus not ethical exactly, but increasingly I've wondered if some governments will start supporting dating apps, if birthrates decline enough. Is that better than a private corporation app? Maybe or maybe not but it seems like it might change the "ethical issue landscape".

Or maybe dating apps per se will fade away and dating functionality will just get folded into more general purpose apps and sites.

> It may be ethical as far as not charging users to connect

Actually, I think "charging users to connect" is the only way to make an ethical dating app. The key thing is, everyone pays the same amount, and gets the same abilities within the platform. No freemium, no free riders. Everyone helps keep the platform sustainable.

You do still have to deal with the perverse incentive to keep people on the platform, but I have an even crazier idea for that: one-time single payment. Now the platform is incentivized to get people off the platform while still being satisfied enough to recommend it to incoming users. I suspect that could go badly in different ways, and might not be necessary if it's generally acting in the users' favor (possibly because of my craziest idea, having it be user-owned). I'm still thinking about it.

That or someone needs to run it as a charity. I'm not sure if that's more or less crazyb than the previous ideas.

> If people were able to connect and move on quickly, there would be little reason for the app-creators to continue developing.

If an open-source piece of tech is working as advertised, why would its devs continue working on a finished product?

Ethical dating sites are possible and have existed. But they dfintiely can't exist in this current landscape. Like you said, an app who's goal is ultimately to stop people from using the app is not one that will get the funding needed to stand out from all the Match.com shell companies.

> lean into what makes you unique and try to find the same or something compatible in someone else.

This part is cultural though, and the fact is most people (regardless of gender) are not looking for "unique". Quite the contrary. I suppose that is a bit of why the "normie" nomenclature is not as far off as you first think.

Duolicious openly mocks its own users on Twitter. Calling them “chuds” and such. I guess if the shoe fits, wear it.

But what a childish company to advertise on 4chan and market itself as being for that audience, to then sit there using condescending and derogatory slurs about them.

Nice of them to open source everything so you can go make your own Duolicious with blackjack and hookers I guess.

Oooh I like this one much more, I wonder how active it is..

I wonder how they get away from becoming prostitution as a service apps.

It's just extremely difficult to get any money (including donations) after you've hit the end of the "marketing funnel." People meet, are happy, and won't look back. Maybe a "first time is free," type of arrangement?

I agree with this, but funnily enough, this makes the system work, just not for the reasons at face value. So, people don't match because of they like similar hobbies, they match because they look for the same proxies of values and status.

Well, I am not especially found of tattoos. But if there is one thing I dislike in dating profiles, then it is a long laundry list of what I have to be and what I don't have to be. Nothing makes you look older and unavailable.

Hah yes. But I think we have a few orders of magnitude to contend with...

Sure, it's just that sometimes when people talk abou "ethical" dating and dating apps they are mostly talking about limiting the top guys from taking most of the women or keeping most of the women busy. Usualy via forced monogamy or some sort of forced "fair play". I'm of the opinion that top guys should have a bigger piece of the pie than the avg dude but there should be a limit, something in-between "winner takes all" and monogamy.

People usually do this for validation or just the fact is the opposite, often times these kind of people couldn't get partners just because they have this "I'm top __% guy so my partner should be ___" mentality and keeps complaining.

Problem is that the top guys are also after your "type" of women. All type of women.

Edit: Also a lot of intellectual women tend to stay away from men seeking intellectual women cause most of the time it is a red flag, cause if you probe deeper a lot of these guys are looking for nerd girls for unhealthy reasons, like they have an unhealthy image of a "nerd girl" in their minds, other times is it just coping, they would be with the sports illustrated girl or "go with the flow" art girl if they could.

I can assure you than my D is slightly smaller than the average.

sure