Guys, unless you are really hot you are just wasting your time on Tinder
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Tinder is brilliant in that it focuses entirely on vanity, ego, and lust, far more so than any of its predecessors. Thus, it has taken a large portion of the dating market away from sites like OKCupid, which had virtually nobody on it in the LA area when I last used it nearly a year ago. Once upon a time, I was an overweight nerd with no money, yet I somehow got dates through OKC. Those days are long gone.
The only alternative I can recommend is real life. Nothing beats it, and it's the only way you can know you aren't wasting your time. Go to meetups and actually talk to people and figure out how to improve when you screw up. Being able to get to know people, even if they don't end up being dates, is pretty awesome. It means actually having to grow as a person, but I would bet on a higher success rate than with any dating app/website.
All dating apps I know of are a joke. Bumble is hilarious because it actually makes an existing problem worse and sells that as a solution; women don't want hundreds of messages from random penises, and they're very unlikely to initiate a conversation.(i don't blame them) Match, Chemistry, PoF, and all those old-school sites are borderline scams that charge a fortune. Match will send you daily emails telling you how many likes(is it "winks"? i can't remember now.) you're getting, but none of that seems to manifest on the site itself. It's the ol' bait and switch.
I'm using dating apps for over 10 years now. Dated 3 women via them.
In "real life" I found 12 in that time.
But I still do it, every few years I get some nice surprises :)
I went to a ton of meetups and group events in real life over the course of three years (and to a lesser extent for years before that), met a lot of women through that, but very few of them were either not in a relationship or emotionally available at the time (either too focused on their career, in an 'it's complicated' situation, going through crap with family, not very financially stable, waiting for their unicorn and would accept nothing less, etc). Many of these women I never saw with anyone or spoke about being with anyone over the course of many years in successive meetups.
To be fair, I was in a similar situation through a good chunk of my 20s when I was either working my butt off for startups or completely broke, so I understand.
But online dating was much less frustrating for me.
Online dating does separate the wheat from the chaff in that sense, but I still find it more frustrating because there's far more competition I have to deal with and 99% of the time there's no return. When I'm in public with someone I find attractive, there's a high likelihood I can at least strike a conversation with them. Even if nothing comes of it, I gain experience. With online dating, I just get experience updating my profile and sending messages with almost no payoff.
It definitely works for some people. My best friend met his fiance on OKCupid years ago, and I've gotten multiple dates through it in the past, so I know that it can work. Whether the online dating sphere still functions properly is a different question, considering my online dating success decreased while my situation in life drastically improved, which makes no sense to me.
I'll add that I'm not particularly bothered by any of this. As you were in your 20s, I am at a stage where the benefits of dating don't outweigh the benefits of focusing on my craft until I can reach a certain threshold.
Don't go to events and activities looking for love. Go to events and activities looking for interesting people to get to know and be friends with - and let them be a filter of "Hey, I know someone you should meet" when they know you're single. Similarly, if you have friends who've never met but who are single and have similar interests, don't be afraid to introduce them to each other.
When the founders sold to Match, and presumably also got less involved in the day-to-day, suddenly I stopped hearing anything good about it anymore. I can't personally vouch for it, being out of the market at the time, but it went from being a pretty reliable recommendation that I'd often hear friends talking about, to quickly developing a reputation for having a high creep factor, lots of low-effort and fake profiles, etc.
As with many businesses, I think the demand for growth uber alles killed it. If they had been content being a niche service, they would have survived and served that niche well. But too few businesses (especially startups that get sold) are allowed to do that; their management requires they either shoot the moon or burn up trying.
In particular, I think there is a solid niche for an OKC-like dating site that actively rejects "mobile first" low-word-count design in favor of the desktop (check your messages when you get home, no "swiping" from the shitter, etc.), emphasizes profiles with lots of information and underlying data to construct matches on something other than photos, and basically serves a very literate demographic. Basically OKC circa 2004. Though today, a modern version would also need tools to aggressively block users that are abusive or just plain "creepy", because there's an Eternal September aspect to the Internet today that didn't really exist back then, that you'd need to combat -- spam-type adaptive filters would probably do the job ('is this spam' is a pretty vague question for a machine, so is 'is this creepy', but you could teach the filters over time given a good dataset and feedback mechanism).
Though in 2010 to about 2014 Christian Mingle was the best as there weren't many guys on it and I dated a dozen average to attractive looking women in a few months. Not many use it like before as they didnt jump to mobile quick enough.
The problem I have with meeting people from "real life" is that they're mostly random people that I usually have little to nothing in common with.
At least on some dating sites I can list my interests, and the people who reply can self-select to have some or even many of these things in common with me.
And as someone else pointed out, it's a great way to drive off women. The last thing a woman wants it to be gawked at by 16 men because they're looking for that nerdy girl. So they stop coming and you end up with the original situation, where it's 16 nerdy guys
It's like you are blaming people for having "impure intentions".
Lots of things are like that.
People who go to a local food event go there to eat food but also they know they are going to meet some people that they may like, at least for some people that's a part of the motivation too.
And the problem isn't that they're looking for someone to date; the problem is that they're not at all invested in the group - and if you go to any group with only the intention of picking up a date, that's the vibe you'll throw off as well, and you'll be unwelcome there.
"Real life" doesn't have to work that way. Do you enjoy cycling? Board games? Chess? Knitting? Great -- go out and do those things with other people! Unlike with an online dating checklist, those people probably won't be faking those interests, so you'll actually have something in common.
Question-based dating sites match people on these criteria. That’s impossible to do with someone you meet at a bar.
And bars are a terrible place to meet people, unless you want to meet people who enjoy hanging out in bars. Mutual activities often correlate with similar personality traits, and are enjoyable ways to spend time together.
What meeting people in real life means is basically just getting on with your life and doing things that interest you. Like comics? Go to a comic shop. Fascinated by chainmail bikinis? Start spending time at Renaissance Faires - or learn to make them and build a community around yourself. Enjoy mountain biking? Go biking, then go grab coffee or drinks with some other people doing the same. Don't focus on doing these activities to meet potential romantic partners - do them to have fun because you enjoy them and meet other people who enjoy the same things. Don't expect those people to be possible partners, expect them to be friends or acquaintances and to be people through whom you may meet a possible romantic interest.
To quote Ben Carson, "I don't have facts to back this up," but I feel pretty sure that a huge percentage of relationships come from either having some common activity (e.g. "high school," "college," "coworker") or from knowing someone in common (e.g. "friend's brother/sister/other friend").
The one thing I can pretty much guarantee for you is that sitting at home and hoping for a date with an interesting delivery person (or service person if something goes out) is not going to be a successful approach - and if you're that delivery or service person instead, remember that asking out someone whose home or office you've just gone to would be just as creepy as being hit on by the people you've been sent to.
I can't disagree with this enough.
If you want a job, are you going to continue going to the activities you've always been going to and hoping to meet someone that gives you work?
If you want an apartment to live in, are you going to go to the same activities you've been going to and hope that someone there is a landlord?
Maybe you would. But most people would check a jobs site or a rental site. Why would romantic relationships be any different?
That is absolutely a viable approach, and it's one that works for a lot of people. In fact, the two of us have just described "searching for jobs" vs "networking for jobs."
My point though was not so much to do those things to find a partner, but to get out and do things. Part of what you're looking for is not just relationships but (possibly) higher-quality relationships found through people who will vouch for those they're introducing.
For different people "Our matching algorithms say you're an 80% match with this person" vs "Hey, I know someone you should meet" will have different levels of credibility and acceptance.
People have become very picky with very short attention spans (scroll through feeds, swipe left/right, filter people on dating apps based on very specific attributes, etc).
Also to a large degree "locality" benefits (and limitations) have faded. 10-20 years ago people didn't have access to such a seemingly infinite pool of people. It was more limited to the people around them (people likely to visit the same pubs and coffee shops and events and so on).
I don't think young people today have the patience to "invest" in getting to know random people like that anymore.
Instead of spending days and weeks with someone only to find out that they don't match well together, they go through 300 profiles and talk to 5 of "the best" ones out of that pool.
And often times there's lots of information packed in social media that they can pick up quickly (politics, job, education, culture, etc). It would take much longer to pick up that stuff in organic real world interactions because people don't quiz each other like that.
I thought it was a Facebook data mining app.
That's a feature, not a bug. For many/most people, there's not a strict binary division. Dates can turn into hookup and hookups can turn into real relationships. I know multiple friends in long-term relationships which started as Tinder hookups.
It's not a really a problem though because people can indicate for themselves in their profiles, either explicitly or implicitly, what type of relationship they are looking for; it can be different things for different people.
> Tinder is brilliant in that it focuses entirely on vanity, ego, and lust, far more so than any of its predecessors.
But I think that misses the main appeal of Tinder, which is that once you match with someone you basically have an invitation to start a conversation with them, and hence are less likely to be wasting your time (or someone else's). IIRC, on other sites, you can simply message any random user and thus are much more likely to spend time messaging someone who has absolutely no interest in you.
In my anecdotal experience (which means feel free take with a handful of salt), it never really worked out that way. I've gone on dates via Tinder where a profile explicitly stated "no hookups" or something to that effect that did, indeed, turn into hookups.
Also, and this is the more obvious thing, I think, is that a dating platform designed to not require you to actually read a profile before deciding if you're interested isn't going to be the ideal place for stating "preferences". Hence, my anecdotal experience.
So, it is indicated
That's a "feature".
It makes it mainstream enough for people to be there without being embarrassed or ashamed.
Then people can turn it into more of a dating thing or a hookup thing as they prefer.
Few people would want to publicly create a profile on "just-here-strictly-for-hookups.com".
That's also why a huge percentage of profiles, especially female ones, insist so strongly that they are not there for hookups. It's a facade and a bit of virtue signalling ("I'm not a slut like those other girls!").
So, when I started picking hobbies and going to events based on gender ratio first and fun second, it felt kinda awkward. I figured most people were like what I used to be. If they were in a badminton league, it was probably because they wanted to play badminton, not to get hit on by some guy.
On a dating website, everyone is at least in the same ballpark of expectations. It's straightforward. And, ultimately, it worked. I got engaged after 4 years with a great girl I met on OKC.
This has most likely has nothing to do with Tinder itself but with being from a different country. Especially the French accent is very appealing to American women and being tall (which, as a Westerner, you probably are) is a big plus in Asia. You could walk into any bar and meet women.
Surprisingly, I met an American woman, who was here to study for 2 months. She landed 4 days before we met.
She was way, way out of my league, both in attractiveness and social class. My English helped a lot. I also met several South American women too.
I'm gonna assume you're a heterosexual male. NYC is one of the worst market for heterosexual women, because 1. they outnumber guys by a significant amount 2. NYC is very gay friendly, so homosexual males are overrepresented.
I have personally observed this difference even in meatspace.
1. Small sample size
2. Inactive profiles
3. These apps actually adjust the profiles you see based on your attractiveness level. I know they at least categorize attractiveness because I've had this experience when Bumble seemingly had a bug where I would suddenly get a ton of profiles that were clearly super-attractive people, then get a bunch of profiles that were clearly the exact opposite (no profile images, dark or random pictures, and :ahem: not so conventionally attractive people).
However, the general point stands: The majority of women will like a minority of men on these apps. As such, as a man, if you want to make this work for you, the basic strategy is to get as highly attractive pictures of you as possible (professional if you can) and pictures of you doing various interesting activities (as opposed to just vanity shots). Then, keep swiping right and follow up on all matches. But don't make this your only source of meeting women, as others suggested, spend a lot of time in places where you can meet women in real life.
Tinder doesn't supply any statistics or analytics about member usage so I had to collect this data myself. The most important data I needed was the percent of men that these females tended to “like”. I collected this data by interviewing females who had “liked” a fake Tinder profile I set up. I asked them each several questions about their Tinder usage while they thought they were talking to an attractive male who was interested in them. Lying in this way is ethically questionable at best (and highly entertaining), but, unfortunately I had no other way to get the required data.
Netflix's recently released (Dec 29) Black Mirror season 4 episode 4 "[explored] Tinder and Siri-like technologies": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_the_DJ_(Black_Mirror)
(Why’d you edit out your question? I thought it was interesting!)
My personal recommendation sounds like a specific subset of yours -- meet people by volunteering, expecting to learn from rejection as the initiator. In-person interaction can overcome the specific shortfall that is the primary topic of this discussion - getting/giving(!) a chance orthogonally to attractiveness. The volunteering bit provides a framework for shared direction and is beneficial well beyond meeting strangers (don't volunteer solely to start relationships!). This comment covered some caveats: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16041801
Unreliable conclusions derived from unreliable "data" that was obtained unethically (and probably illegally; did the pictured guys knew their picture was being used?).
We're back at "my guess is as good as any other".
What evidence can you provide that would lead someone to believe this?
This seems like little more than an exploration of the ramifications of that massive assumption. It would only take a small amount of variation in preferences to make the concept of a "top 20%" inapplicable.
Please do check it out if you're interested and provide feedback. Anything is appreciated!
Heres the appstore link: appsto.re/ca/SfGTib.i
Its more about actual intimacy because harder to find a connection using Tinder because communication is first about building up intimacy whereas people you may know tend to have more of an earlier connection.
Female sexual selection is a powerful force that creates the male dominance hierarchy.
Hell, for a claim that suspect and borderline hostile, multiple, peer-reviewed and reproducible citations, plural, needed.
If you're having trouble with matches, maybe you aren't very interesting, or you don't signal it in the right way. Quit complaining and get to work.
I know very few women on tinder, but most of my single guy friends are on it.
The reality is women are creeped out by many men on dating sites and apps. If you don't believe me, go talk to some women and ask them about their experiences. Or go read the /r/creepypms subreddit, which isn't just concerned with online dating but shows you what women have to deal with online.
This pushes them towards only interacting with the most attractive and witty men who create a sense of safety. Whether that sense of safety is false is up for debate, but I do think this is what drives a large amount of inequality in online dating. Men are generally not scared of or creeped out by women they interact with online, so their standards online are closer to their standards in real-life.
It's been a long time since I took Psych 101. Does anyone know, has this idea ever been discredited, from a statistical standpoint?
I guess the discrepancy could also be caused by selection effects, i.e. what kind of people use Tinder, and/or what frame of mind are they in when they use it.
"After surveying 150 women, they concluded that they could almost predict how attractive a man was based on three things: how physically strong he looks, how tall he is and how lean he is..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/women-stron...
Being gay these days pretty great, for many reasons. Almost all of my perceived downsides I felt growing up w.r.t social stigma/discrimination have been mostly eliminated in my day-to-day.
I had a gay roommate who was very active on Grindr. He was reasonably attractive. Essentially, he could meet another man within an hour if he wanted too.
It's interesting as once those hot to attractive guys connect and chat with you a human connection is made and hooking up, becoming friends or becoming occasional sex buddies is highly likely.
Of course you need to show your face, so just send your best pics of yourself. I would say Im about average looking, but can take some above average looking pics.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-nigerian-scam-emails-are-...
By making the opportunity purposefully vague, only those who are extremely open to the opportunity (or desperate) would send a PM. Not sure if it ever works, but the internet is a big place.
But the whole men/females usage seems to get a lot of representation among men who have novel theories about interaction of the sexes in general and how women should be required by law to have sex with them specifically.
Totally my opinion and could be completely off-base, but seems to ring true to me.
It is definitely not a dating app where you'll easily find someone to marry, but like anything else.
95%?
So there's still a chance! Men are not going to give up that easily.
No citation needed.
Also his sample size of 27 and self-reporting makes this not very rigorous(?).