They don't bite, if you make a move with enough respect and confidence.
In my opinion while convenient, they should be last resort.
Yes. I couldn't agree more. Spent 2-3 frustrating years on Tinder without much success. At the start of the pandemic, I was done with being alone in my apartment and decided to try to approach women on the street. My takeaways:
1. Heart rate goes over 130 (according to the Garmin smartwatch)
2. It's **much** more fun to be rejected. Instead of being ignored, you get cool stories like me asking "Hey, you look nice. Would you like to chat?" and getting as response "Uhm... No, I'll continue walking".
3. Get inspiration/courage from watching lots and lots of YouTube videos from people who do nice approaches. I personally liked ThatWasEpic a lot. See for example https://youtu.be/cj9tvIFcUeU.
4. It's much more effective in my case. I'm with my girlfriend for 2 years now and she was the 6th person that I approached... I'm not kidding. After years of Tinder.
So, delete dating apps and go out and talk to people.
Yeah no. Creepiest advice in the whole thread. idk where you live but this is the easiest way to get cop called on.
If you follow her around, especially after being asked to leave her alone, then we're getting into harassment territory. But if she calls the cops because you talked to her, she's 100x more crazy than you are creepy.
This thesis is sound.
>Get inspiration/courage from watching lots and lots of YouTube videos from people who do nice approaches. I personally liked ThatWasEpic a lot. See for example https://youtu.be/cj9tvIFcUeU.
This is just weird, though.
That's how it was for a long time. And, IMHO, it was not a bad setup.
I certainly would not call it a miserable reason to participate in those events. For example as a youth I went to dances (which, not knowing how to dance felt very uncomfortable), "intellectual" movies and classical concerts (which, for a small-city oaf who only thought about science, were way out of depth), but looking back I think I got a very good return on the time I spent on those.
I'm not sure when that changed, but the comments in the thread don't suggest to me it changed for the better.
“Willing” even sounds that you don’t even really want to.
The thing is Tinder has 75 million active users. If we assume 75% of these active users are men, and only the top 10% of men will reliably match, approximately 51 million men are gambling their time away (75×.75×0.9=50.625)
The analyses were like gender x attractiveness x willingness to approach x receptiveness to being approached. It looked like all four variables interacted at some level.
Maybe it wouldn't generalize and maybe I'm remembering it incorrectly but it was something like that.
There’s no such thing as a 1-10 scale everyone falls on. We all have types, and sometimes those types run counter to the mainstream definition of “attractive”.
The trick is to figure out what type you are, and try to become the best version of that.
IMO success comes down to 3 key things: profile, conversation and managing expectations.
First your profile, take high quality photos and weave in a story about your life in there. Guys think that it's the shirtless 6 pack that will get dates and while that's true, what I found is you have to build an "attractive lifestyle" through your profile. All my photos are of me doing things, on boats, outside, etc and all my prompts are things like "We should go kayaking together" and stories about travel. It's not one thing on my profile, it's the entire thing that builds a persona of a person that likes going outside alot and traveling, women find that very attractive in my experience.
Second is the conversation. You have to get good at actually "closing" a girl on a first date. There's a ton of "science" that guys will spew but it comes down to practice. The first couple of girls you talk to you will probably fuck it up, keep going and you will get better. My strategy here is to talk "lifestyle", where are you traveling, what shows have you seen, and NEVER EVER EVER BRING UP SEX.
Finally it's managing expectations. Most of these girls "fall through" not at the matching/conversation stage, but after the first couple of dates. Most of the time it's not something either person did, rather us realizing that we are just not right for each other. At this stage it's very easy to get bitter, the key is to keep going and not get bitter, and understand that if you're going to be playing the "online dating game", you're going to get a shit load of rejections.
At this point I do not even consider the "1st date" to be a real "1st date", rather I consider it to be a magic "0 date" that only applies to online dating. Usually on a first day you've already had one interaction with that person to figure out that they are worth going out with; however, with online dating you don't have that. So I consider the first time we meet to be more of a screener date, don't expect to go home with the girl, don't even expect a kiss, just make sure you like them and think if you would like to see them again. For these dates I usually go to a coffee shop mid-day, if it goes well we can schedule a longer dinner/activity date, but if it goes off the rails you can cordially end the date in about 15 minutes.
The difficulty for most men is getting those 1-3 dates per week, not the follow-through. As much as you might want to attribute your success to your charm and conversation, even getting a match per week, let alone enough to turn into 1-3 dates, is the barrier. And anyone who's getting 1-3 dates per week is likely going to be able to find a relationship if they're looking for one after a couple months.
Quality of pictures and persona certainly plays a role, but there are immutable traits that apps prioritize that radically reduce the amount of inbound interest. Getting off the apps as suggested in the parent comment is the only real way to deal with that.