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r3df0x ,

Pim Tool likes to rant about online dating, but the reality is that there are dudes that can only date this way.

The thing that concerns me though is that eventually more people are going to identify as “awkward” and will refuse to go on dates with anyone they meed IRL and feel like everyone should only contact them online. We already see this with irrational fears of talking on the phone where millennials and zoomers insist on communicating exclusively through texts.

jjjalljs ,

Most dating apps are looking to make a profit first and provide a good service second. This is terrible, but we live in a capitalist hellscape so it’s not surprising.

HOWEVER. A lot of people are really bad at using dating apps. This is kind of a peeve of mine and I’ve been thinking of writing a book (or at least a blog post) about how to do better.

The premise is “throw the ball back”. So many people match and then just drop the ball. Their profile says they love NK jemisen so you write “she’s great! Did you read her new book 'the city we became '? It’s a total love letter to New York”. A fine message. And they write back “No”. End of message.

My dude that’s not how this game works. They’ve thrown you the ball with their message. You’ve caught it. Now throw it back by asking a question of your own.

If you’re not interested or don’t have the energy to be present, don’t say anything. If you’re not interested, just unmatch. If you don’t have the energy, come back when you do. If you never have the energy, delete the app you’re not ready.

And to all the people who just message with “hey”: please do better. You look incompetent when you do that.

That’s true of like all text messages, come to think of it. Some of you assholes probably message me at work on slack with “hey” instead of starting with the important part.

Also don’t be a fucking pen pal. If they matched and responded to your initial topic well, just ask them out. That’s what you’re both here for.

I’m an extremely average guy who doesn’t date men. If I can do this so can all of you.

r3df0x ,

When people find a partner, the dating service stops making money from them.

I agree. My sister and I both found our partners through online dating. I never found a decent partner until I completely changed by strategy, so yes, a lot of people are bad at it. Conversely to don’t say “hey,” don’t send massive walls of text with your entire biography either.

There are some people that online dating works better for. My sister is a trans lesbian in a conservative state and is only attracted to cis women. It’s not going to be easy for her to just go out and date.

If you’re a lesbian, stay away from any services that allow searching for “friends.” My sister was very upfront about being a lesbian with a penis and she still got tons of messages from creepy dudes

jjjalljs , (edited )

When people find a partner, the dating service stops making money from them.

Weirdly, most of the dating apps don’t really support ethical-non-monogamy. You’d think that’d be an easy source of repeat money. But ENM is a whole other tangent. People get mad about it.

Conversely to don’t say “hey,” don’t send massive walls of text with your entire biography either.

This is good advice, too! I’ve encountered too-much text far less often than not-enough, so I didn’t think to include it. Typically if I find myself wanting to write more than a couple sentences at once, I turn that into “I’d love to talk more about this on a date”.

The last woman who sent me far-too-much text also sent me a completely generic opener. I think it was “What’s the last piece of art that moved you?” This probably seemed smart and deep to her, but in my opinion it’s not a good opener. It’s generic. She could have sent that to anyone. Nothing on my profile indicates I have a particular relationship with art. Do not send a first message that could have gone to anyone. What you send should be particular to them.

r3df0x ,

Yeah. You need to give the message that you actually read their information and you’re not just trying randomly to score.

pete_the_cat ,

Regarding your last two sentences: it’s a chore to do so for 30+ women a day per appwhen it’s mostly a negative feedback loop, the more you do it the more you hate that you’re doing it because you’re trying to be sincere and unique and you’re not getting responses, you try to be generic and you get no responses.

If she has a very basic profile with just the basic info, the only thing you can comment on are the pictures (her) and her info.

jjjalljs ,

It can definitely be a chore. And extremely disheartening. But that’s the world we live in. And hopefully love in, as my phone autocorrect wanted to say. For you this might be the 20th original message you’ve written today, but for them this is their first impression of you. Make it count, or you’re just self sabotaging.

Also, if you’re getting 30+ matches a day, that’s a good problem to have. I get like a couple a week, and about half turn into dates. Some I reject, sometimes they reject me. I’m a guy who doesn’t date men.

But anyway, I don’t really disagree but I always recommend when it starts to feel like a chore that you hate: take a break. The apps will probably always be here. Go outside. See your friends.

I also just don’t bother messaging people who don’t have anything in their bio/blurb to talk about. The rare times they message me first, it’s almost always “hey” tier bad.

pete_the_cat ,

I’m not saying I get 30+ matches a day, I’m saying “I send 30+ messages a day on various apps, not just Bumble and get nothing in return”. It’s like applying for a job. It’s spending $35/month in hopes that you get a response.

r3df0x ,

Meme representation of what happened:

https://preview.redd.it/tfw-trying-to-find-a-girlfriend-online-reupload-v0-lxoy9yghvfx91.png?auto=webp&s=6913f928c961f1462e8765e8e1c1c4491640cbb8

EtherealMoon ,
@EtherealMoon@lemmy.world avatar

I really loved OkCupid back before they sold out. They would share a lot of interesting data on their blog posts, and seemed genuinely interested in making successful matchups based on how your profile was presented to others. It was fun to be on there and didn’t feel like you were just being presented for “dateable” you were if you didn’t want to be.

I also met my wife on OkCupid, but that was just before the site really took a nosedive. Pretty annoyed they deleted my account without warning, so the first message she ever sent me is gone forever.

Thrashy ,
@Thrashy@lemmy.world avatar

My wife and I also met on OKCupid, probably around the same time as you – Tinder-like features were starting to appear, but the core of the experience was still about reading other users’ personal essays and comparing compatibility quiz responses. Of all the services I tried, OKCupid (in that particular incarnation, at least) seemed like the only one that was genuinely aimed at fostering deep personal connections. I haven’t been on any of the apps in almost a decade now, but it really seems like the shallow, gamified Tinder model of “swipe right if they look hot” ate up the marketplace, to the detriment of everyone.

pete_the_cat ,

Yeah that’s literally all it is now, a few apps are like “there’s no swiping here” but then the mechanic they came up with is worse.

r3df0x ,

If you want to save stuff like that, it’s good to save it because sites disappear. There are also a lot of weird “privacy” obsessive people who have a bizarre fixation of wanting accounts to be “deleted” if they don’t sign in for a certain amount of time, and some sites are starting to give in to them.

Check for emails in both of your accounts and you might be able to find the text of it there.

BartyDeCanter , (edited )

Dating apps are deeply, deeply enshitified because the economic incentive for them is the exact opposite of what monogamous users want. Specifically, the apps want you to keep subscribing, plus buy the super platinum plus extra added packs, but never really find someone and date them, because then you stop paying. Old school pre-sellout OKCupid had a great analysis of this in their blog, which was taken down the day they sold out.

This is why the few sites/apps that cater to non-monogamous or event based communities are still reasonably decent, e.g FetLife, Bloom and Feeld, though Feeld is partially down the enshitification pathway.

I’d be really interested in seeing what a fediverse dating app would be like, something that didn’t have the financial incentive to enshitify, and maybe had a match/search system like old-school OKC.

EDIT: missing word.

SlurpDaddySlushy ,

I used dating apps for 10 years. Got maybe a dozen replies and 1 date. So I’m looking at like a .00001% success rate. It’s heartbreaking how unattractive that makes me feel.

BartyDeCanter ,

It’s not you, it’s the apps. They’re set up that way to get you to pay for them.

SlurpDaddySlushy ,

That’s a big nope from me.

elbarto777 ,

Well, if your goal was to get at least one date, then I’d say the success rate was 100%!

SlurpDaddySlushy ,

I would not call the date a success lol. I tried to plan to go somewhere but the girl knew a mutual friend so she said she felt more comfortable coming over my apartment. She was adamant about being pizza (which was awful), and when she walked in she cracked a joke about how easily she could get raped. 0/10. Did not see her again.

elbarto777 ,

Oof, quite the story!!

frazw ,

I did online dating for many years. I used match, eharmony, tinder, pof, okcupid.

I fully understand the ‘soul destroying’ comment. For me it was a lot of work for little return. I started off being selective. Messaging one person at a time so I didn’t end up getting two responses and having to put someone off or turn one of them down. That was naive it turned out as I got very few replies. So I started messaging multiple people at once. I always tried to personalise things but my effort varied with how optimistic I was feeling about online dating.

Ultimately I think I got responses about 10% of the time. From them, 10% turned into a date, from those maybe 50% would get to a second date.

So overall it every hundred messages I’d write , 1 would end up in a date. I went on quite a lot of dates over the years, but I had to devote so much time to getting them it was, soul destroying.

I never thought i was unattractive, but online dating made me question if I really was. I never thought I was an ass, but online dating made me question if I really was. I would sometimes have very long conversations before meeting to find there was no chemistry in person. Sometimes I would like them when we meet and they would ghost me. Sometimes they liked me and I didn’t like them, but I always tried to be honourable and tell them, not ghost them since I didn’t like it happening to me.

I am male in case my experience doesn’t make it obvious. I often spoke to some of the women I got on better with about how online dating was for them and their experience was pretty awful for different reasons. Generally they were bombarded by messages and a good number of them were obscene. Guys trying to hook up rather than date. To manage their inbox was a real challenge and they probably missed out on good matches because of the noise.

My overall impression of the whole thing is that it generally sucks regardless of whether you are the one doing most of the messaging or whether you are receiving messages. I also think it makes it more like shopping than dating, dehumanising people. Do I want the 8K 42 inch TV or the 4K inch TV? Actually, can I even afford it?

All that said in the end it worked for me. Over 6 years since I last logged in and I think it was a bit of an addiction, or perhaps desperation born of loneliness.i also have a daughter now and there were times I thought that was never going to happen.

So for me online dating was years of frustration, difficulty and upset, but in the end I’m glad I did it but it took a long time.

r3df0x ,

It’s very superficial and any of the girls who are remotely attractive get tons of messages, plus they have to be on edge for anything out of the ordinary.

The one thing I’ll conceed to Pim Tool about online dating is that it can easily funnel all women to the top value men. That said, the most desirable men are going to exclude the unattractive women. Based on observing other people dating online, it seems like younger girls who are unattractive are aware that they can get older dudes who are probably desperate.

Polar ,

I found my girlfriend just before COVID popped off, but I would argue that dating apps are insufferable now due to how polarizing the world is.

Just having basic conversations with people online, including Lemmy, is so tiring. Like how I was called names for saying Windows just works, and then as I was being attacked for it, I was literally typing the comment from a Linux distro that currently wont allow Steam to download at higher than ~120Mbps, despite my internet being 1900Mbps. Then the guy continued to go off, calling me names, telling me that I am such a moron, all because I showed a live example of how Linux wasn’t “just working”?

The internet is so exhausting and toxic these days.

mightyfoolish ,

The Internet is just trolls (whether paid shills or people doing it for fun). Sometimes you think that some of these people just might be higher up the spectrum. You’d be right for one out of five of them, the other four are also just trolls.

HawlSera ,

No it isn’t. Those things are nothing but trouble

Clbull , (edited )

Coming from somebody in their early thirties who has had nothing but atrocious luck with women in general, I’ve mentally checked out of dating.

Every dating app is now a carbon-copy of Tinder where you can’t pull a lady unless you look like a fucking Chippendale, are above 5’11" tall, have your own property and are sufficiently wealthy. It also doesn’t help that Match Group hold a virtual monopoly over the market, with Bumble as their only credible competition. They literally profiteer from making the experience as miserable as possible so they can sucker you into paying a £40/month subscription.

Match also put the bare minimum into moderating and policing their apps. The sheer volume of love scammers, fake users and spammers shilling OnlyFans pages is massive, and it feels like they really couldn’t give a shit about enforcing their own rules.

Online dating really is that soul-destroying, and the longer I spend trying to use any app, the less it surprises me that the incel, MGTOW and red pill communities are growing, and that people like Andrew Tate and Sneako have such a huge following despite being such garbage human beings.

At the same time I wish there was a better alternative.

BURN ,

TBH app based dating has entirely ended the possibility of dating for me. It’s just not worth the effort and constant rejection. Add on being lower than normal attractiveness, and 5’5” to boot, it just isn’t something that makes it worthwhile anymore.

I’m no catch myself, and would need to do a lot of working on myself first if I wanted to date, but it’s not something that seems worth the effort now. It’s been so commodified that I just don’t have the will or want to put in the work.

figaro ,

My advice to people here is usually all the same: stop worrying about it. Do stuff that you enjoy. I don’t even want to say work on yourself, because it implies that you are actually doing that in order to find somebody. Don’t even do that. Just do what you want to do.

Find meetup groups you want to do for you, not for the possibility of meeting people. Find ways to have fun. Work out because you want to be stronger and healthier. Sign up for community college classes on topics you find interesting.

If you do meet someone interesting in the process, cool! But don’t let that be your focus.

And yeah dating apps all suck for many, many reasons.

kicksystem ,

That seems like super generic advice. Why would you give it to anyone? Are you more qualified somehow than the people you give it to?

carl_the_llama ,

It’s an advice it’s up to you or anyone who recives it if you want to follow it or not

kicksystem ,

Sure, but even so you’re nudging people in a direction that may or may not be the right direction. Some justification for advice is in order, right? I don’t know, perhaps @figaro is a social psychologist who has spent years researching this topic?

figaro ,

Lol what do you want from me 😅

kicksystem ,

I don’t know. Some justification for your advice maybe? I know you intend well, but I am genuinely wondering how you know whether your advice is right and why you feel qualified to give advice.

Just one thing, you can say dating apps all suck, but I found my wife on a dating app, so maybe weave that into your story as well if possible :)

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

The discussion of this same article on Hacker News is shockingly redpilly.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38055947

echodot ,

The dating apps would still be useful if they haven’t broken themselves in order to make short-term profit.

If they hadn’t all sold out to the same company who then ruined each one of their purchases that would also help as then there would still be some competition in the market. But sadly it’s now become monolithic and completely pointless

ChrisLicht ,

You do understand you’re gonna give this kid a complex based on a single anecdote?

Meltrax ,

The apps served a purpose. They raised the available pool of possible dates from “who’s in this bar with me right now” to “everyone in a 10 mile radius” or whatever, and everyone is there for the same reason, mostly.

But it also doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It shouldn’t be. Use an app you like and also go to in-person dating events. Just use apps if that’s your speed. Fuck the apps and go out there and meet people at the local cafe, or board game night, or beer league softball, or whatever. It can augment the old ways. It doesn’t have to replace the old ways.

Patches ,

From “who’s in this bar with me right now” to “everyone in the entire world” but mostly Russian spam bots, Only Fans, and ‘Influencers’ 🤮

FYFY

Clbull , (edited )

You forgot ‘South East Asian and African women GPS spoofing their way to matching with Western men with the aim of getting a spousal visa in mind.’

That’s what 65% of my matches on dating apps are. The other 35% are fake accounts using photos stolen from a model’s Instagram or Weibo. Unfortunately the mobile nature of modern dating apps makes it far more difficult to run a reverse image search and weed out those fakes. But generally if I match with someone hot enough to look like a model, I’m automatically suspicious.

This isn’t me having a preference. I just don’t want a long distance relationship with somebody who lives 5000+ miles away. Been there, done that.

I used to date a Japanese lady who came to the UK on a student visa to do a foreign exchange year. Our relationship fell apart the moment we finally closed the gap.

Also, I’ve known ladies who have married foreign spouses and the ordeal they’ve been put through by the Home Office to bring their husbands to the UK. I don’t want to have to surrender years of private chat logs to the government and be interrogated for hours because of their crackdown upon mail order brides.

A_L1FE ,

He got the 110% match rizz

MadBob ,

They’re saying he can’t count on anyone any more.

Clbull , (edited )

I just realized that I fail at basic maths and counted to 110, not 100.

It’s more of a problem with Okcupid than anything else. Match drove that website to the ground once they acquired it.

Customer Support gifted me a month of Premium half a year ago after a really bad experience I had with another user harassing me. I found out that nearly all of the 100+ likes I had on my Okcupid profile were from ladies who didn’t even live on the same continent as me. They’d just switch cities and countries all the time, then disclose where they actually lived in their profile description.

GPS spoofing is incredibly easy to pull off, and despite it literally being a violation of the site’s Community Guidelines, their customer service team really don’t give a shit. Quote:

Also, your profile details such as age, height, location, etc. must be accurate. We restrict searching and showing profiles based on mutual fit for details like age, location, gender, and orientation for a reason: so that you can find a person who is looking for someone just like you. Changing these details to appear in searches that you would not otherwise is not allowed and will result in your profile being banned.

I logged into my account for the first time in about two months. I still see matches I reported that remain unbanned to this day.

THEY HAVE THE CHEEK TO CHARGE £20 - £40 A MONTH FOR PREMIUM.

pete_the_cat , (edited )

This has definitely been my experience. 8 years after my last relationship and I’m still single. I’m an average looking guy, I put up nice pictures, I filled out the profile, I spent time crafting a good opening message, etc… I had maybe 30-50 conversations, most of which quickly died out, some just wanted to keep talking for weeks before we met, at the end I think I ended up with less than ten actual dates, none of them went to a second date.

My first therapist even suggested an experiment (edit: this was actually my idea,but he supported it): replace my profile pictures with those of a male model and see if I get tons of messages or it stays the same. I ended up getting about 3 or 4 more messages total then usual, none of them went anywhere either.

jay9 ,

This is the interesting thing about looking hot. It brings its own host of problems; serious problems they aren’t really acknowledged by society at large because of apparent privilege.

kicksystem ,

I couldn’t really find scientific research to back this claim up. Can you elaborate and back your claims up?

lightnsfw ,

People actually want to be with you so it attracts the crazies. Opposed to us uggos that just get ignored.

wagoner ,

What was your therapist’s theory they were trying to test, that you might be ugly? Seems a very odd thing to ask you to do.

atkion ,

I’m guessing they knew that it likely wasn’t a problem with being ugly, so the therapist did this ‘experiment’ as a way of demonstrating that. Seems pretty solid to me, actually.

pete_the_cat ,

Yeah it was my idea but he supported it, and pretty much wanted to help me prove that it wasn’t my appearance, just shitty apps. He said he had a bunch of clients that were in the same boat as me. I work in IT and do programming on the side, so I have an insight into how these things work, and of course if you actually find someone the app loses your business, which is bad for them, so it’s beneficial for them to string you along.

pete_the_cat ,

It was my idea but he supported it, pretty much testing to see if my pictures were the issue or not.

Some people say to never use selfie shots, others say it’s fine. Some say to have only pictures of you with no one else, others say it’s fine. It’s difficult to figure out what actually “works”.

jjjalljs ,

You had 30-50 matches over eight years? Where do you live, bumblefuck?

Also the apps aren’t for conversations. They are for meeting people. If you are trying to have a lengthy conversation on Tinder, you’re putting screws in with a hammer.

pete_the_cat ,

Nope! Manhattan, the polar opposite of Bumblefuck! The problem there is the sheer amount of people, even average or below average women will get bombarded with 10s or 100s of matches a day and just as many messages, so you just get lost in the crowd if you’re not a perfect 10. Also there’s a lot of dudes in the city that are just creepy as fuck. I’m obviously not good with women, but these guys make me look like Casanova. Women almost always have their guard up because of that. I just moved to Miami 2 weeks ago and it’s a breath of fresh air (both literally and figuratively haha) to have strangers be friendly and want to talk to you.

I was never trying to have in depth conversations with these women, I wanted to jump from the match right to the date. They’re the ones that wanted to wait days or weeks until a date happened.

jjjalljs ,

I mean I live in Brooklyn and I get about one date a month. Probably more if I hit the apps every day instead of just tinder. And I’m a pretty average guy with a big deal breaker.

I’d love to see more of what guys who are failing are doing differently than me.

pete_the_cat ,

I lived by Park Slope (Windsor Terrace) for a year (moved out of NYC in June) and yeah I got a fair amount of matches, but half of them never turned into actual dates because people were too busy with their lives. I’ll admit that I did get more matches when living in Brooklyn than when I lived in Manhattan, but as you’re aware, Brooklyn is fucking huge.

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