There seem to be a lot of decently intelligent men that are not skilled at writing good profiles and msgs.
Thoughts on what one would pay, with and without a guarantee of X success.
That said, I hear the demographics in SV are pretty bad for men. Here in NYC, I met my partner fairly easily through a friend (classic way).
What I like about real life dating and meeting is that if something goes wrong, at least I know what it was (for the most part, definitely not always). I've had friends who don't reply to messages because they simply forget about them or are busy, or decide to not do online dating any more without telling anyone. Maybe that's less common than I think, though.
As much as things like PUA and /redpill are hated on this site, I've learned a few grains of wisdom from some of the online dating threads.
Advice for Guys:
1. Don't write long messages. 2. Try to keep the ratio at 1/1 or less (you vs them). 3. Go for a number / date as soon as possible. 4. If #2 or #3 fail, move on to someone else. It is a numbers game, and you are at the disadvantage as a 20 something guy.
I have had decent success in my 30's using this strategy - far more than I had in my 20's, though a lot of this is due to my age and other factors, not just messaging.
Honestly, if I knew at 25 what I know now, I wouldn't recommend any guys that aren't in the top 20% of attractiveness (i.e. tall, fit, good job, social skills) to bother with online dating. It is about as effective as trying to pick up random women at bars at closing time (i.e. it probably won't work, and will waste a lot of time, energy, pride, and money).
I know/have friends that are actually really good at getting the first date, but strike out after it. At the end of the day you need in person skills, and being polished yourself to be lucky at it.
People that are polished in person and come out as they have their stuff together, tend to do much better in meeting people in real life. It seems that most dating apps are geared/optimized towards engagement and keep you swiping more than actually finding a partner.
Also, the only success stories I have heard of online/app dating has been only from women.
90% is visual is it not?
How is it for you ... if you don't find her attractive as im sure you look at her pics first.. are you going to bother reading what her profile says?
I think it is how it is written. I met my wife on Match.com 16 years ago, back in the dinosaur age of internet dating. If you look around on these sites, they often have a 2000 character (or similar) limit on the text you can put in the profile, and most ads do not even use 10% of that. "I'm not good at these forms, just ask me anything!" or some useless drivel that does not tell me about the person.
My profiles had the most success when I used all the character count, and I spent a fair amount of time editing in Word. Since you get one shot to make a first impression, why not make the best possible? I try to get someone who knows me well to read it, and to check to make sure the tone is correct. Who wants to date someone who comes across as angry or bitter?
If I put that much effort into the wording, I would always get a ton of top level choices. The women wrote me, I didn't have to chase them. I think the differentiator was that they could clearly get a sense of my personality (what I thought was funny, etc) from reading the max length profile, and it stood apart from the 100 character competition. At the end of the day, it is a sales job like any other - put on your best presentation, clearly explain your deal breakers in a positive way, and be better prepared than the next guy.
Because all you have to do is be more appealing than the competition. If the other guy is more attractive, but seems boring, then you will probably beat him if your profile is amusing. Intelligent women get tired of pretty but stupid guys, they usually want someone with more substance. If you can communicate that in your ad before the first date, then you are several steps ahead.
I have an outside sales background; once I put dating in the context of selling it became something I was quite good at. I was just selling myself after all.
They after all might procreate with you.
https://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dat...
(e.g. If every men is the same, except one who is beautiful, than everybody is below the average but one.)
So to clarify - your data says nothing about whether women are judgemental - they may be just realistic ;) If beauty is in the eye of the beholder than how can we argue them?
[1] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/christian-rudder-datacly...
You'll be able to come to your own conclusions
If all these apps are coming out with an attempt to make dating apps not suck, they're doing an excellent job of falling into all the same pitfalls over and over again.
Oh, hey, you homogenized the entire population of a city and made everything about pictures again!
You can go on Craigslist and get a 'professional' photographer to do a session with you for $100 or so (relative to COL). You will still need to put in effort with getting some fitting clothes, asking friends for help, etc. Professional, in this case, usually means someone that has a high-end camera and knows enough to use it.