Paul Eastwick

That's a pretty small market, especially relative to what we experience currently in the modern day.

But you had one thing going for you, which is that you were likely to be able to get to know these folks over a pretty extended period of time, in some cases, months or even years.

And what we see in our research is that some of that consensus, that agreement about who's desirable and who's not,

As people get to know each other over time, what starts to happen is that that agreement actually declines.

So that thought experiment we did earlier where we see a photograph of a guy and we agree 65% of the time.

If it's now somebody who's in our social milieu, like a friend or an acquaintance, now you and I are agreeing like 53% of the time.

I mean, that's better than 50-50, but not by much.

And what has happened is that as we have gotten to know folks over time, you see a spread in how we think about that person.

So, okay, we agree they're a six at first, but with time, some of us think he's a nine and some of us think he's a three.

But with that additional spread, what that means is you have more opportunities to

for people to feel like, yeah, I understand not everybody's into him or not everybody's into her, but I really think there's something special about her.

That in many cases, people are tempted to draw up these lists of deal breakers, things they really can't do without in a partner or partner.

I guess I would put it things they really think they can't do without in a partner.

And you spend a lot of time filtering on the apps for folks with those features.

But, you know, throughout the research that we've done, the extent to which this is ultimately mattering in terms of shaping your pool into people that you're especially likely to click with.

It's just not that great.

The analogy here that I like to use is that, you know, you feel like you're ordering specifically for you off the menu when you're using the filters on the apps.

But if I secretly had somebody else come in and use their filters instead, and those were the guys you ended up meeting, like somebody else was ordering off the menu for you, honestly, you'd be just as happy.

It really wouldn't make much of a difference.

And that's why we recommend, like,