from Hacker News

The Dating Ring Is Raising Money To Fly Women From NYC To SF

by jacoblyles on 3/4/14, 9:26 PM with 49 comments

  • by fossuser on 3/4/14, 9:58 PM

    I thought it would be funny to make a joke site with this idea (even grabbed sadsingles.com a few days ago for it) - it's interesting someone is actually trying it.

    The dating situation is so bad for single men in their early to mid twenties on the west coast that I'm starting to think it's worth bailing on the area entirely and moving to NYC just for that purpose. (Palo Alto has got to be magnitudes worse than SF which is still pretty bad).

    At first it looked like the situation in NYC was even worse for women with the 150k vs. 50k difference, but the population of NYC is 8.2million where SF is only 805k. Still dramatic, but not nearly as bad.

  • by rubiquity on 3/4/14, 10:34 PM

    This article makes it obvious how far behind technology NYC is compared to SF. Men in SF don't want women from NYC flown to see them. Men in SF want women delievered by Quadricopter drones.

  • by daniel-cussen on 3/4/14, 10:40 PM

    I believe this is not the first time this happened in San Francisco.

    During the Gold Rush, the gender ratio was about 50 men per woman. It got better with the years, but party organisers kept doing their damnedest to get women to go to their balls, inviting (and arranging for travel for) women from as far as Missouri, over the Pony Express.

  • by themoonbus on 3/4/14, 10:18 PM

    Pardon the language, but this reminds me of the Fuck Truck (at least in decades past, when the MIT male to female ratio was way more out of whack):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellesley_College_Senate_bus

  • by dictum on 3/4/14, 10:12 PM

    And in a third, different place on Earth a man is choosing between keeping his sanity or caving in and typing "valleywag.gawker.com" in his browser's address bar.

  • by dnautics on 3/4/14, 10:42 PM

    "Also, not great, as pointed out by another TechCrunch writer: The implicit assumption that all dating is between women and men."

    Another possibility is that there's no first-order[0] geographical arbitrage opportunity presented by gender imbalances when men seek men and women seek women.

    [0] there may be "second-order" abritrage opportunity, in terms of sub-types of men or women.

  • by xivzgrev on 3/4/14, 10:38 PM

    Humor is all this is.

    Open question: where do men here in SF try to meet women?

    As a man, I have yet to see such a lack of single women in the city that would necessitate a project like this, even when I was dating around for 9 months.

    Me thinks either standards are too high or don't go far enough out of your comfort zone. I could imagine being wrapped up in a startup, eat, breathing, sleeping it. And yes, not too many single women in the startup scene.

    But startup != San Francisco, though it may seem that way from the news media.

  • by alangstaff on 3/4/14, 10:38 PM

    They need to make this frictionless...much like Uber. Make an app where I push a button and a 'dateable' girl gets delivered as soon as possible to a bar of my choice for an instant date. She doesn't have to be from nyc.

  • by mcherm on 3/4/14, 10:06 PM

    ...and why didn't they raise the money to fly a planeload of eligible MEN to NYC?

  • by jsumrall on 3/4/14, 10:47 PM

    My issues with this: 1. Whats the goal from the date? Nobody is going to commit to a long term relationship, and I doubt you will convince a guy to leave his job in SF to move to NY from this date.

    2. Waste of resources/emissions. Sure, the effect of this is negligible since the planes will be flying anyways, but in principal this just seems like a huge waste of resources.

    3. Given 1, it seems that this "date" is really just going to be mostly one-time affairs. Which is cool. But why not just find a date locally or hire an escort.

  • by jenncom on 3/4/14, 11:27 PM

    Dating Ring couldn't wait until a single date's worth of Groupon signups were had before moving on to the next pivot? http://www.groupon.com/deals/the-dating-ring-1

  • by wsidell on 3/4/14, 10:04 PM

    The ratio in New York City is hardly a problem since the population is so big (8 million). It is like 53% women and 47% men.

    I am a man and went to a college that was 55% men and 45% women. I never felt like there was a lack of women.

  • by 31reasons on 3/4/14, 10:47 PM

    VCs should be concerned. They are trying to fly in distractions. What if your founder starts wasting time dating women? Shouldn't they be focused on their startups? Startups are on a peninsula for a reason :)

  • by error54 on 3/4/14, 10:35 PM

  • by hellbanTHIS on 3/4/14, 11:05 PM

    Most expensive city in America, the most downright tyrannical laws in the country, might come crashing down on your head at any moment... oh, and NO WOMEN.

    I thought you guys were supposed to be smart.

  • by bryze on 3/4/14, 9:53 PM

    I wonder what proportion would be willing to relocate either direction, or is that not the idea? Long distance never worked out for me.

  • by dfgeheht on 3/4/14, 9:49 PM

    Wait - so they can't get a date in NY, and they think the standards are lower in SF, so they might get a date?

  • by ballard on 3/4/14, 9:49 PM

    "It's like Great Expectations but with airplanes."

    Any service that takes money from people by preying upon their dreams is inherently evil. This doesn't solve dating because it's unsolvable on purpose. Unplanned spontaneous clicking probably won't happen when it's the advertised goal. Joining interest groups on meetup would be infinitely better.