32m here and ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they’ve gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm. I always do max swipes daily on fb dating, tinder, and bumble with minimum to no success. Tinder being the worst of the three. Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking. Anybody find what works on these apps if you’re an average looking man?
ymmv, but for me, the cheat code is to get out of the app asap and meet in person once the app let’s you find someone.
imo, it is best for their business to keep a person in for the engagement.
best of luck on your search!
Yep, there’s a cheat code.
- Be attractive.
- Pay them.
For “be attractive” a lot of people think the requisite level of attractiveness is unattainable for them. Its not. Be decently in shape, groom yourself, have some style in the way you dress. The other half is taking good photos. Take photos that look good, that you look good in, and which create a vision for what the best version of your life looks like.
And then pay them. Tinder, bumble, and hinge basically have a monopoly on the market. Its pay to play. You can get matches without paying, but it is a lot fewer and a lot less.
Never pay. If you pay once, they make it even harder to get matches to entice you to pay even more.
Have you experienced this yourself? Because I have not experienced this.
Here are the steps
- Don’t be ugly
- See step 1
It’s
- Be attractive
- Don’t be unattractive
Just not being ugly isn’t enough, you gotta be actively hot.
I’m not hot. I’m not ugly, but also not hot and had plenty of dates from dating apps when I was on them.
Good job, not a slob, decent bio, and quality photos of myself.
I was also really selective in who I swiped on. I didn’t swipe right on every hot chick. I swiped right on girls I found attractive and best guess from profile lifestyles were similar.
I went out with plenty of attractive women, hooked up with a handful and dated a few. I also went out on plenty of bad dates, the girl who carried a dead lizard she found on the ground. The autistic racist. The girl with gnarly teeth.
Then I randomly met my wife through a coworker.
Which plays into how you present yourself vs how you look in general.
Ok, obviously people being attracted to you is a huge plus but there are plenty of average and even below average dudes out there with amazing women. Why?
Because they’re typically genuinely nice, caring dudes that don’t treat women like some mountain to be summited.
You want to know how to have enjoyable relationships with women? Maybe try actually being friends with a woman; no ulterior motives. Just find a friend and nurture that friendship. It’s incredibly easy to be around women when you don’t tack a bunch of sexual bullshit onto every situation involving them.
Inevitably, you’ll either find a suitable partner organically or you’ll be introduced to someone that meshes well with you.
Women make up 50% of the population. If you can’t have a normal interaction or a friendship with them, that’s a problem that requires you to look inward to resolve.
I feel you are mostly right in this one but I heard women hate people who befriend them for sake of seeking a relationship beyond friendship.
On the other hand, let’s say you always looked at a woman as friend and suddenly she expresses her feelings for you down the line. Would you be ready to mold the relationship on the spot, which you have seen as a platonic friendship from the get-go? Why is that they can do it but not men?
And if you had crush on someone and you intentionally made friendship with them to give you a chance for it to go beyond friendship, would that be a wrong thing? And if in case, they had expressed feelings to you because they liked your personality, would you be able to say that they were always was your crush? Wouldn’t that throw then off seeing you were seeking romantic relationship with them from the start?
I might’ve gone slightly off-topic but this is a good discussion I feel.
Would you be ready to mold the relationship on the spot, which you have seen as a platonic friendship from the get-go?
I’m not a relationship expert so I can only give a response based on my own subjective feelings and opinions.
I’d say that you’d probably be able to tell pretty easily if a friend would be a suitable partner if you’ve spent a decent amount of time around them. It might be a bit of an uncomfortable conversation to turn them down, but good friends should have healthy communication and a discussion about why the interest isn’t mutual would probably go over well. If you just say no and provide no context as to why, that would likely end badly.
would you be able to say that they were always was your crush?
I did exactly this with my wife. We initially became friends because she was one of my roommate’s girlfriend like 15 years ago. We had a strictly platonic relationship for about 10 years, but I was crushin hard after 5.
Turns out that so was she.
Having gone from the guy with no matches to getting good matches, in part from advice from female friends, here’s what worked for me in order of priority:
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De-red flag. Remember, men are about 5-10x as likely to commit acts of violence as women. So imagine you’re looking at your profile as a third person, assuming there’s a good chance you’re a serial killer. Make sure your jokes are clearly jokes and can’t be read as hinting at any extreme beliefs or even overall weirdness. Seriously, there’s like a 90% chance that if you haven’t done this already, you’ve got something on your profile that’s terrifying to most women. Now a common faulty cognition I see is “I should tell her what other girls don’t like about me as a warning”. No, stop. That’s not how you do it. Because girls will assume it’s 1000% worse than what you’re saying, and even worse the algorithm will nuke you if you get too many rejections. Instead, see step 4) and reject other girls who won’t be into you.
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Good pictures. Again, 1) comes into play here. No dark backgrounds. Nothing that looks like one of those pictures they show of suspects on the news. Outdoors is good. If you have pictures with people, great. If not, no sweat, just make it look good. Look up a guide on how to take a good selfie and use it.
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Keep your written answers short. No one reads them anyway, unless they’re really long and creepy. You’re not going to convince her you’re Shakespeare, she’s really just checking to make sure you don’t remind her of someone she had a terrible experience with.
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Now all that being said, the best strategy for swiping is to be the opposite of most people. Don’t just swipe on anyone who meets your attractiveness standards. Instead, swipe only on girls you’d really be excited to meet, and that you think would be excited to meet you too. Are you frugal? Don’t swipe right on the model with a Gucci bag. I know it’s hard. But you really have no chance of making it and dating her would make you miserable anyway. So swipe left and get the little boost that helps you meet a better match. I will say I’ve followed this strategy on Hinge which supposedly has a better algorithm for matching people, so I can’t guarantee it for other sites.
#4 is so true, even 15+ years after I stopped using dating sites. I went on a lot of bad dates with attractive girls until I found my wife, who I matched mostly on details than looks alone.
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If you have social anxiety, that’s the bottleneck here.
Don’t stress about the apps. I’m an attractive guy, almost always in a relationship, and in any of the times I was single, I never got a date through a dating site.
Good photos. Not shitty selfies. Have your friends take “candid” photos of you doing stuff. They’re not actually candid, they’re fully thought out and planned.
Have your friends take “candid” photos of you doing stuff. They’re not actually candid, they’re fully thought out and planned.
In all seriousness, I don’t think I could ever do that.
Even if you can’t manage staging something like that, even just asking a friend to help you take some pictures will up your odds significantly. The pictures are going to be the first thing most people see on your profile so having a friend help find good angles and such will be really helpful
Are they really your friends if they wouldn’t help you with that?
They probably would if I asked. I wouldn’t ask.
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Do something cool: work on your car, do sports, go to a party, go on a hike…
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Have a friend with you and tell them beforehand that you want them to take some pictures of you now and then.
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Enjoy your activity with your friend
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???
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Profit
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For someone who has not put much emphasis in taking good pics of mine, I really understood the importance of this when someone asked me to share good pics and I had to go dig out my pics from 3yrs ago.
I have never used these social media apps where main moto of them was posting your pics and hence I ended up not liking the idea of pics at all, until I realised they are important to have, just for yourself and your loved ones.
Me and my partner met on a dating app and we’ve been together for years. Idk I hate dating apps, but there’s no rules. You can meet someone anywhere. I’m kinda shy, so dating app worked for me
I am very awkward when it comes to women so yeah it would be nice if the apps worked
Just treat her with respect and be a good listener. Maybe my perception is skewed but it seems like most men can’t do that these days. For context, I’m also a man.
Yes. Give up and go get a social hobby or volunteering. If you volunteer, you will literally be drowning in pussies
Only if he volunteers at a cat shelter…
100% volunteering. Think about it: 2 randos volunteering for the same thing!! Instant commonality! Whodda thunk!!
Dating apps hate this secret.
Short answer: No
Long answer: Nooooo
If irl feels difficult one thing you might try is actually online roleplaying with real people (via text or voice). All the time in the world to overthink and process anxiety and allows building a bit of confidence before trying the real deal.
The 5 yrs I was on apps I’ve had maybe 3 or 4 dates (no second dates) from maybe 3x as many matches. Meeting people irl during the same time maybe 9 dates with some resulting in follow ups, and maybe 2 dates from people I met online from other spaces.
Online roleplaying?
Yes, it can be a way of exploring various social situations without pressure whilst also having fun.
There aren’t any particularly good forums for it on Lemmy unfortunately but if you like I can send a discord invite to a community for finding people to rp with on DM.
That sounds like “The Nathan Fielder Method” from The Rehearsal.
hadn’t heard of that one, sounds like a fun comedy series
It absolutely is!
Sure that would be nice
sent a message
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If you figure it out, let me know. I am also in my 30s and have never had any success with dating websites/apps. I’ve only ever had success meeting people the natural way.
Personally I wouldn’t even bother with dating apps. Date someone from work or go to a singles event. I’ve had great success with those methods.
You basically need to buy premium. It sucks and is predatory but it makes a huge difference. I would drop $20 on boosts Thursday afternoon and end up getting a date for Friday/Saturday maybe 2/3 of the time. About 75% of my matches came from paying for buffs.
be hot
Tell us more about your current usage. What are you doing and where is it failing?
Some of the other posts already hit the highlights. Have a variety of well lit photos. Your profile should be short, but with some unique-ish hooks for people to talk about (eg: “reading ‘such and such’ for my book club!” - several things for someone to ask about there).
When you do match with people, don’t send generic messages. Don’t just send “hey”. Go read https://nohello.net/en/ for a post about that in other contexts.
After you’ve had one or two successful exchanges, clear any deal breakers you might have (eg: “really enjoying this conversation but wanted to make sure you saw on my profile I have a toddler. Are you okay with that?”). If that succeeds, ask them out.
Don’t provide too many choices. People get overwhelmed easily. “I’d love to talk more about (whatever we we were talking about). Do you want to go on a date? I like (local bar), but (other bar) in your neighborhood looks fun, too!”. Two choices. They’ll probably pick one.
More specific advice may be available if you tell us more about your specific experience
Just haven’t gotten any matches although I got back on the apps like a month or so ago
What part of the world are you in?
In my experience, tinder is pretty bad. I don’t use facebook so I can’t vouch for that one, but I assume it’s also bad. I never got a single match on Bumble.
Hinge, I got pretty good results on. Even though they’re all owned by the same Match Group, hinge seemed to work better. I could get about a date a week on hinge, as an average guy.
I think it worked better for me because you can send a note when you see someone you like, so if you can write complete sentences you’re already a cut above the average guy.
I’m in the northeast of USA. I paid for hinge before but only got a couple matches. It’s the most expensive one but offers the most I’d say
I never paid for it out of stubbornness.
Are you writing good messages to potential matches?
On hinge? They weren’t creepy or anything
Data shows that something like 80% of guys on dating apps don’t get any attention from women. I don’t remember the exact figure. But dating apps are a tough demoralizing place for most men. I’d say branch out in your hobbies and focus on self improvement and hopefully you’ll bump into the right person with some shared interest.
Are you going to therapy for your social anxiety and over thinking? Cuz even if you got a match on the apps, you’re still going to face those issues when you actually meet up.
One thing I’ve seen reported in recent times is that men hardly show up to singles events and speed dating type things anymore. But that might be a lot of pressure for your social anxiety if you showed up somewhere and you were the only guy in a room of women.
