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?

        • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
          0·
          1 month ago

          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.

          • zerozaku@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 month ago

            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.

            • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
              0·
              1 month ago

              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.

      • Zannsolo@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        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.

  • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
    0·
    1 month ago

    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!

  • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    They absolutely have gotten way, way, way worse. I deleted all of them, despite 1.) being single, 2.) wanting to date again, and 3.) having met multiple dates on multiple apps in the past. They’re simply not like they used to be, in part because of Match Group buying them all up and in part because the other non-Match Group options followed that same “successful” model.

    It honestly feels like the only way to succeed is to pay, but EVEN THEN, using Tinder for example, you’ll still be pestered to pay and most of the likes they suddenly turn on once you pay will be fake, bot profiles. To an absurd degree these days. And the prices are outrageous, with many of them having the gall to charge WEEKLY now. It’s not a you thing, it’s a “the apps really, really suck” thing. There’s a reason so many people, men and women alike, complain about these apps and insist they must “only see the worst matches.” Because they almost certainly do. If they send you your best matches, you wouldn’t subscribe anymore. If they send you bad matches, plus “good” fake matches, they think it’ll keep your hopes up. Except it’s obvious when all the fake profiles look the same, are exactly 99 miles away from you, etc…etc…

  • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Yep, there’s a cheat code.

    1. Be attractive.
    2. 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.

  • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@slrpnk.net
    0·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    0·
    1 month ago

    On the apps, the cheat code is paying up. Even then, it won’t guarantee any success. Last app I used was bumble, around the end of 2023, which was on its way of enshittification, but still worked muuuuuuuuuch better than tinder. Got lucky and met my current gf there (4th or 5th woman I managed to go out on a date from that app, out of many that I chatted with).

    My main problem which makes me rely on the apps is that I simply rarely feel like going outside. Not doing any group activities seriously hurts your chances of finding anyone interesting.

    Real life wise, your best bet would be trying dance classes, especially any that are supposed to be danced in pairs

  • last_philosopher@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    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:

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    • FenrirIII@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      #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.

  • Septimaeus@infosec.pub
    0·
    1 month ago

    Disclaimer: I’m not straight, but when I used the apps I mostly matched with women, who were mostly cis and mostly straight.

    It sounds like you’re looking for a LTR. Tinder is mostly for HUs. Everyone I met on there was casual-only or wanted long term but like, desperately. Bumble wasn’t a significantly different crowd when I tried it, in spite of the hype. Hinge I heard was better for LTRs, with a questionnaire system and everything, but never tried. Overall, my impression was that lots of the “looking for something real” folks in the apps probably should’ve been prioritizing therapy and learning to love themselves before throwing themselves into another LTR. This leads to my main point at the bottom.

    For more swipes/matches, top rec is almost always better photos, especially for straight men, but I would modify that recommendation slightly. I think you should first ask yourself some questions about your target audience.

    Why: Let’s say you’re advertising yourself as a kind stable safe and hard-working man looking for a LTR. That profile, to be successful with your target audience, will easily scare away the casual crowd for lots of reasons. The sincere and detailed bio, the photos of you posing with others at formal events, etc are all workable but limit your marketability to a specific subset of women who mostly lurk.

    Just for fun think about a hypothetical fuckboi-version of your usual profile, complete with poorly lit bathroom selfies, shirtless beach photos, and a bio that’s just a line from a Tarantino film. That alter ego will get more swipes than you, not because he’s prettier or fitter than you but because he seems approachable, fun, and easy. So maybe ask yourself what of this alter-ego actually expresses aspects of your personality, and consider incorporating a bit more of him.

    The apps weren’t built for courtship rituals and in general it’s very hard to generate chemistry by text. Even a relationship that starts off casual can go many places, and has the advantage of beginning with everyone’s cards down. Just my .02… GL

    • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’ve always tried to go for the ltr profile with lots of details… I’ve since given up but I feel like it might be worth it trying your suggestion with a more easy going version. Thanks

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • zerozaku@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      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.

    • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      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.

      • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        1 month ago

        1. Do something cool: work on your car, do sports, go to a party, go on a hike…

        2. Have a friend with you and tell them beforehand that you want them to take some pictures of you now and then.

        3. Enjoy your activity with your friend

        4. ???

        5. Profit

      • HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zip
        0·
        1 month ago

        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

  • moseschrute@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    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

      • moseschrute@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        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.

  • cub Gucci@lemmy.today
    0·
    1 month ago

    Yes. Give up and go get a social hobby or volunteering. If you volunteer, you will literally be drowning in pussies