A social calamity of epic proportions

Well here is an inequality issue that most guys can get behind.

Social justice advocates love to fixate on inequality, also known worldwide as the Pareto Distribution, when it comes to wealth or income, ignoring that the only economic systems with low income inequality are also the poorest and most traumatized (war, plague, etc.).

In a tongue-in-cheek study, Worst Online Dater has deployed his nerd skills to determine the dating odds against the bright but aesthetically challenged, a distressingly marginalized victim group. Granted the sample size is small and the research protocols lax but the findings are sufficiently alarming to warrant additional research.

This study was conducted to quantify the Tinder socio-economic prospects for males based on the percentage of females that will “like” them. Female Tinder usage data was collected and statistically analyzed to determine the inequality in the Tinder economy. It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men. The Gini coefficient for the Tinder economy based on “like” percentages was calculated to be 0.58. This means that the Tinder economy has more inequality than 95.1% of all the world’s national economies. In addition, it was determined that a man of average attractiveness would be “liked” by approximately 0.87% (1 in 115) of women on Tinder.

This is a tragic inequality that has been hiding in plain sight for decades.

Worst Onlne Dater elaborates:

As I stated previously the average female “likes” 12% of men on Tinder. This doesn't mean though that most males will get “liked” back by 12% of all the women they “like” on Tinder. This would only be the case if “likes” were equally distributed. In reality, the bottom 80% of men are fighting over the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are fighting over the top 20% of men. We can see this trend in Figure 1. The area in blue represents the situations where women are more likely to “like” the men. The area in pink represents the situations where men are more likely to “like” women. The curve doesn’t go down linearly, but instead drops quickly after the top 20% of men. Comparing the blue area and the pink area we can see that for a random female/male Tinder interaction the male is likely to “like” the female 6.2 times more often than the female “likes” the male.

He then shows the problem in all its graphical horror.

Click to enlarge.

We can also see that the wealth distribution for males in the Tinder economy is quite large. Most females only “like” the most attractive guys. So how can we compare the Tinder economy to other economies? Economists use two main metrics to compare the wealth distribution of economies: The Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient.

The Lorenz curve (Wikipedia link) is a graph showing the proportion of overall income or wealth assumed by the bottom x% of the people. If the wealth was equally distributed the graph would show a 45 degree line. The amount the curve bends below the 45 degree line shows the extent of wealth inequality. Figure 2 shows the Lorenz curve for the Tinder economy compared to the curve for the U.S. income distribution from a few years ago.

Click to enlarge.

The Lorenz curve for the Tinder economy is lower than the curve for the US economy. This means that the inequality in Tinder wealth distribution is larger than the inequality of income in the US economy. One way economists quantify this difference is by comparing the Gini coefficient for different economies.

The Gini coefficient (Wikipedia link) is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality where everyone has the same income (damn commies) and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality where one person has all the income and everyone else has zero income (let them eat cake). The United States currently has one of the higher Gini coefficients (most income inequality) of all of the world’s biggest economies at a value of 0.41. The Tinder Gini coefficient is even higher at 0.58. This may not seem like a big difference but it is actually huge. Figure 3 compares the income Gini coefficient distribution for 162 nations and adds the Tinder economy to the list. The United States Gini coefficient is higher than 62% of the world’s countries. The Tinder economy has a higher Gini coefficient than 95.1% of the countries in the world. The only countries that have a higher Gini coefficient than Tinder are Angola, Haiti, Botswana, Namibia, Comoros, South Africa, Equatorial Guinea, and Seychelles (which I had never heard of before).

There you have it. A social calamity of epic proportions.