- When you were writing good messages, were things very conversational and informal?
- Did you ever get reviews from women about how you were good at conversing? It also counts if they told you how the other guys they talked on dating apps were mostly awful at talking
- Would you are cognizant of messaging social norms (e.g. you know when to omit punctuation, shorten words, keep your messages short, avoid "double-texting", space out the time between texts, etc) and were good at following them during your online dating?
- Were you in the age range that the article talks about?
Putting effort into a messaging is definitely important, but there are a lot of small and strange details that make large differences in how those messages come off and how much people enjoy them. I'm not trying to bash you, just wondering if you're actually great at these conversations, in the age range I'm in, and yet still not getting good results.
> That's why you see men writing a bunch of generic low effort messages to women: because it is ultimately a more successful strategy.
If you're very attractive, yes. But if you're aren't very attractive and you're sending bad messages, how is that more successful than sending good messages? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you. By "low effort messages" do you mean "bad messages" or do you mean "fluid messages without overthinking or too much detail"
What else would they be?
> Did you ever get reviews from women about how you were good at conversing?
No, but women rarely respond at all so I'm not exactly surprised by that. Even the women I eventually went on dates with never mentioned it.
> Would you are cognizant of messaging social norms
I would say I actively detest messaging social norms. I write legible full English sentences just like you see here because I'm an adult. I specifically ruled out women who obviously felt differently.
> If you're very attractive, yes.
If anything I would say that being very attractive is the only circumstance under which you can reliably get results without spamming low-effort messages.
> But if you're aren't very attractive and you're sending bad messages, how is that more successful than sending good messages?
Numbers. What my experience taught me was that message content was basically unimportant, what mattered was reaching out to as many potentials as possible in the hopes of a few being receptive.
It was a strategy I detested. Combined with the general tediousness and awfulness of the online dating experience I decided I'd rather not date than engage in it.
By "low-effort" I mean messages that are basically form letters one can apply to anyone so you don't have to put any thought into crafting them for the person you're trying to talk to.
> No, but women rarely respond at all so I'm not exactly surprised by that
Really? See, that's very weird to me, because I rarely saw women not respond at all. They've swiped right on you, so they've already accepted your pictures and bio, they're willing to be with you if you have a good conversation. If they weren't, why would they swipe right? Tinder, for example, limits the number of right swipes you're allowed to give over some period of time. So that right swipe truly means that all you need to do is have a good conversation with them. Again, I'm really not trying to bash you, and I personally enjoy having this debate with you on HN. But being good at a HN debate is very different from being good at a dating app conversation. I suspect that there was a problem with the conversations (despite the effort and best intentions - conversing well can be hard, especially for my/our generation). But I am sorry that you went through the pain of not getting replies most of the time - that definitely sucks.
>> Would you are cognizant of messaging social norms
// Wow, seeing that I wrote this makes me feel like such an idiot!
> I would say I actively detest messaging social norms. I write legible full English sentences just like you see here because I'm an adult. I specifically ruled out women who obviously felt differently.
Ok, perhaps this could be a big factor in why we had very different results. Unless we're surrounded by very, very, very different sets of people (or we're in very different age ranges), you're specifically ruling out most candidates. In my experience, even the people who write complete sentences in their bios will often follow messaging social norms once you start messaging with them. For a lot of people, following those social norms is required for the messages to feel casual. If I matched with someone and they used complete sentences with proper punctuation in 100% of our messages (e.g. sending "Hey." or something that looked like it could be in a letter), I would instantly feel like I'm in a more formal setting and cross them off the list of potential dates, and the most we'd become is friends. And I know people with much stricter rules about messaging social norms than me, such as feeling like things are too formal if there aren't enough emojis/memes/GIFs.
I'm not trying to convince you to change, and I respect your passion for detesting messaging social norms. But I do believe your messaging style could be a significant factor in why putting effort into conversation yields you no results. I'd be curious to see if the same happens with other people who also don't follow these norms. Thanks for all your responses!
> you're specifically ruling out most candidates.
Yes, because the reality is I just can't stand emoji-laden text communication or single letter representations of words. Many of the women I messaged had said something similar in their profiles. If someone is going to be bothered by that then it was never going to work anyway.
They switched from TCP to UDP because speed/reach is more efficient (in their mind) than deliverability/customisation