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?
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.
Ah you’re right
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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.
I wouldn’t describe myself as attractive, just not unattractive. And I’ve always gotten a lot of matches (with actual people). My social anxiety has been in the way of going further with it most of the time but it’s always been easy to find a date almost immediately when I want. One thing I know helps is my clothing style, 60s-70s, and I recommend people to try to find a style that they like and use photos that show it.
Been in a relationship for quite a while so this is 2nd hand knowledge, but you wanna avoid any app that’s been around for more than 2-3 years.
At the beginning the apps need to get a reputation for successfully hooking people up and they’re usually not urgently searching for money thanks to venture capitalism. After that point though they need to grow and profit.
You know what’s bad for user growth in a dating app? Successfully matching people into a long term relationship; those users may never return.
The end result is what I hear tinder is these days: a siphon into the bank accounts of single people that will do everything it can to avoid making them not single.
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Absolutely no idea what the current set is called, I’m afraid. I’ve been in my current relationship for over a decade
One of my mates was telling me the other week he is getting a lot of luck with one where you match and then immediately set up an IRL date without directly talking. I don’t remember the name though, sorry
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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As a woman my advice is as follows: be a decent and caring human being who does something positive for others on a daily basis. Needy and deceptive behavior drives away people who are attracted to you.
This is a good idea in general, however this doesn’t help when it comes to getting the first interest, because how can you tell if someone is really genuine about caring from a few words on a profile?
But yeah, my girlfriend wanted to start dating me not because I am the most attractive person, but because I am always nice to her and to people in general. To me it seems crazy to not be, but I guess not everyone is like that.
It is not your words but your actions that indicates that you are caring and first interest is not rational for anyone so no point in trying to game it as it only comes off as non-genuine.
This is not useful advice for dating apps.
While that is true, i think it also nicely points out that dating apps are actually not a great way to find a partner anymore
I mean, they were never, like, a fun way to meet a partner. But they certainly are a way.
i can see that, certainly. and there are cases where they are unavoidable. But still (and i show my age here) I’d still rather avoid them if at all possible
A totally understandable take. On the other hand, I personally find them quite useful, and don’t think they should be dismissed out of hand. And I think that if someone wants advice on using them effectively (going back to my original post in this thread), that they should be given advice on using them effectively - not platitudes.
True but OP’s question was about dating apps, where the other person is shown your picture and prewritten blurb, and spends at most a few seconds deciding whether to swipe left or right. I can very easily understand a swipe-right ratio of well under 1%. So I think the question was about how to get past that.
You don’t prefer attractive people?
There is no universal definition of attractive for all people, women, men, robots or space aliens.
Be your true self and if you look far enough, you’ll be someone’s fantasy ( no guarantees on if you will find them attractive as well ).
Even if only 1 in 10 million people think of you as their fantasy; that means you have 800+ possible partners to choose from.
If any of the said 800 people are reading this, drop me a line :D
Rephrasing, you don’t prefer people who you find attractive?
Attractive for me is about the contents of one’s mind and heart.
I prefer my husband; who could gain or lose more than a 100 lbs and I would still be attracted to him. (Not that I wouldn’t encourage him to be healthy, so we can share more years together)
Wow, that is really sweet. For most people I think physical attractiveness plays a much bigger role, especially on dating apps where it’s just a picture or two and a bio.
Profile:
- full body pic
- face pic
- pic showing interests
- pic showing social life
- description taking about your interests and what you want to do (hiking, games, sports, clubs, whatever, open to new things, etc… Don’t be shy about nerd shit)
- be honest.
- be positive.
Behavior:
- pick one day a week.
- pick one hour on that day, preferably the later half of your most normal schedule, or around 6pm otherwise.
- swipe for no more than 15 minutes/app in that hour.
- Most important: Look at people’s profiles, be VERY picky. Swipe right ONLY on people you actually want to TALK to. If that’s 3 out if 100 it’s actually a good thing.
- do this for 3-6weeks if you’re M4F.
The goal is to train the algorithm on the types of people YOU like. If you swipe right on everything it learns nothing and will show you people, and show you to people who share much less potential interest in a date.
This limited swipe schedule is also to combat brain-rot incelification and burnout. Sucks to be alone but go touch a tree and hang out with friends. No friends? I know it sucks shit but you gotta start there. Do the stuff you like doing around other people and take pictures. Helps with the profile, softens the loneliness, and you’ll have people to confide in after a bad date.
Lastly, if you abused your account before(swiping right indiscriminately) it may be messed up. Let it sit a few weeks before trying again.
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
Disclaimer: I’m not straight, but when I used the apps I mostly matched with women, who were mostly cis and mostly het.
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 high quality face shots and full length profiles with your hobbies carefully framed in the background and at least one fancy outfit and picture of you and your dog, etc etc. All that will earn you high praise in the OLD profile support groups but IME can sometimes telegraph expectations that are daunting to many people you’d probably like to meet if given the chance. Depending on the level of polish on that LTR profile, you could inadvertently limit your marketability to a very specific subset of users who mostly lurk and windowshop, vet candidate pools thoroughly, and tend to bring a surprising number of their own expectations, many of which seem to have to do with your “stats.” Again, that’s if they even pull the trigger and I suspect many of them are skilled at talking themselves out of it.
As an alternative, just for kicks think about a hypothetical “fuckboi” version of your usual profile, complete with poorly lit bathroom selfies, lots of shirtless outdoor photos, badly cropped group pics at dark venues, and a bio that’s just a line from a Tarantino film. As unpolished as that profile is, I guarantee this alter ego will get more swipes than the one I described above, not because he’s prettier or fitter (it’s the same guy) but because he’s approachable to a greater number of users, many of whom are specifically looking for simplicity, zero long term expectations/possessiveness, and someone who won’t make them feel guilty for not calling. They also tend to match with others far more frequently. Those users are everywhere, so if you’re not getting matches at all, maybe ask yourself what of that fuckboi alter-ego actually expresses aspects of your personality, and consider incorporating a bit more of him.
Ultimately the apps weren’t built for courtship rituals. It’s just hard to generate chemistry with text and photos alone. Casual relationships are a totally valid and IMO more natural path to a LTR anyway. Those relationships can evolve with time and tend to be healthier, because fundamental aspects of compatibility are already explored and they begin with everyone’s cards down. Just my .02… GL
Edit: clarify wording to sound less like “go forth and be slutty”
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
I’ve never never bothered with online dating, but I’ve heard quite a bit of anecdote about it being an absolute dumpster fire for anyone over 30 who doesn’t look like a pornstar. As others have mentioned, stop wasting time with the apps and do -something- that interests you that’ll get you out and interacting with like-minded people, and see where that takes you.
do -something- that interests you that’ll get you out and interacting with like-minded people
But then you meet either normies or other male nerds, depending on whether you pretend to like normal stuff or actually do the stuff you really like.
I wish old OkCupid was still a thing. There were still way more men than women there but at least it was possible to find the interesting women.
I mean, you’ll have to choose a hobby or w/e that puts you into a compatible crowd. If you’re interested in women, don’t choose something that’s male-dominated.
…also idk what ‘normie’ means to you, but it’s actually okay to date someone who isn’t a carbon-copy of yourself as a different gender. My wife isn’t into hardly any of the nerdy shit that I am, nor vice versa, but there’s enough overlap that we don’t generally struggle to find things to do together; but enough that’s distinct that we can explore our own interests when the other isn’t available. What’s way more important is you enjoy eachother’s perosnality. Specific interests, field of study etc absolutely do not need to be on the same page.
So again, pick something. It doesn’t have to be your favorite thing to do; if you enjoy it even a little, there’s your like-minded overlap.
I think it’s swipe up 2x, swipe down 2x, swipe left 2x, swipe right 2x, B, A, Start
That’s just the normal cheat code. You have to fast open your calculator at the end and type 666 for goth girls.
Short answer: pay them. These apps have made themselves the barrier to human interaction and will put you in front of more people if you pay them. If you’re online dating then you’re playing a numbers game and the best way to win a numbers game is playing as much as possible
Absolutely. It’s Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start. But you didn’t hear it from me.
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.
Posted this 2 years ago and dug it up for you!
Here to offer hope and advice to anyone that’s given up. I’m a 52-yo American male and have knocked it out the park with dating apps. In the 4-years since my wife left, thank god, I’ve had 15-20 dates and 5 steady gf’s for a bit. Getting married 11/24 if y’all want to come!
Pro tips:
- Post a variety of pics. Nothing controversial like guns, dead animals, any other women your age. Or your fucking truck/motorcycle/sports car. If your Confederate flag bed sheets are really important to filter people, go ahead I guess. If the person you’re looking at does not have a wide range of pics, red flag. Women are great at glamour shots. Take the worst pic of the bunch and assume that’s what they look like IRL. Worst case, you’re pleasantly surprised. (Happened to me many times!)
- Don’t be too judgmental. All you’re aiming for is a first date, see how it goes. What’s it cost a man? Dinner for two? Better yet, I dated a woman who said neither party should pay anything on the first date. If you don’t click, no one’s out anything. Go to a park, thrift storing, antique mall, whatever floats your boat. It costs nothing to walk around, talk and gauge each other’s interests and mutual attraction.
- Sorry, but this bit can be expensive. Sign up for half-a-dozen sites. If you’re fishing, it’s best to bait 6 poles vs. one, right? Try the free options of course, see how it goes, but spread yourself around as much as possible. You never know. And that bears repeating. You never know what will happen. More on that shortly.
- Keep initial communication short and sweet. Too much gets lost in text, too many misunderstandings. "Hey! Love (something in their post that you’re seriously interested in, or why else are you contacting them)! (question about something you want to know about them)? Want to (go to the park, get coffee, go thrift storing, whatever)? And then go on the damned date, and do it ASAP, before something stupid happens like a misunderstood text, other plans/dates cropping up, whatever. Just go. If I have to say, “Don’t be an ass and pressure for the date.”, you’re not ready for a relationship.
How I met my fiancé:
She hit me up on eHarmony. Gods that site sucks. Only date I ever got there. Blew her off because her pics were… not so great. She had nothing interesting to say about herself, barebones bio. 3-months later I’m revisiting and saw her “like”. “Yeah, what about this girl again?” She posted more about herself, and more attractive pics and here we are.
The uninstall button. That’s where the real magic happens.
- Be attractive.
- Don’t be unattractive.
If that fails, try being filthy rich.
