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?
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Yes. Give up and go get a social hobby or volunteering. If you volunteer, you will literally be drowning in pussies
Only if he volunteers at a cat shelter…
100% volunteering. Think about it: 2 randos volunteering for the same thing!! Instant commonality! Whodda thunk!!
Dating apps hate this secret.
Good photos. Not shitty selfies. Have your friends take “candid” photos of you doing stuff. They’re not actually candid, they’re fully thought out and planned.
For someone who has not put much emphasis in taking good pics of mine, I really understood the importance of this when someone asked me to share good pics and I had to go dig out my pics from 3yrs ago.
I have never used these social media apps where main moto of them was posting your pics and hence I ended up not liking the idea of pics at all, until I realised they are important to have, just for yourself and your loved ones.
Haha, yes my friends! Like from the friend store. I shop there frequently.
Have your friends take “candid” photos of you doing stuff. They’re not actually candid, they’re fully thought out and planned.
In all seriousness, I don’t think I could ever do that.
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Do something cool: work on your car, do sports, go to a party, go on a hike…
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Have a friend with you and tell them beforehand that you want them to take some pictures of you now and then.
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Enjoy your activity with your friend
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???
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Profit
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Even if you can’t manage staging something like that, even just asking a friend to help you take some pictures will up your odds significantly. The pictures are going to be the first thing most people see on your profile so having a friend help find good angles and such will be really helpful
Are they really your friends if they wouldn’t help you with that?
They probably would if I asked. I wouldn’t ask.
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.
Which plays into how you present yourself vs how you look in general.
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.
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.
Sure that would be nice
sent a message
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!
ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they’ve gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm.
I feel like there’s actual empirical evidence I’ve seen of that. Great engagement-drivers, though, and never getting you into a serious relationship helps keeps you a customer/product.
People are getting savvy to it now, and moving away from online dating.
Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking.
I mean, irl is the eventual goal, right? The online part is a better way of picking who to date at best.
Otherwise, online roleplaying might push all the buttons you need. Or therapy, if you want to handle your anxiety better.
Me and my partner met on a dating app and we’ve been together for years. Idk I hate dating apps, but there’s no rules. You can meet someone anywhere. I’m kinda shy, so dating app worked for me
I am very awkward when it comes to women so yeah it would be nice if the apps worked
Just treat her with respect and be a good listener. Maybe my perception is skewed but it seems like most men can’t do that these days. For context, I’m also a man.
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
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.
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.
First of all, don’t right swipe everyone: I suspect it makes the algorithms bring you down and moreover, you want to date humans, not profiles.
Look at their pictures, read what they wrote and don’t hesitate to swipe left.Secondly, make a good profile by taking a few pictures that suit you well. You don’t have to be that attractive, just to look nice.
Add a funny bio to it and you’re good (mine had a few puns and a sentence they could use to start a discussion with me).Finally, don’t be desperate. It’s hard to cope with that feeling but if you want to date women, please remember they’re highly sought after and will ignore you (or ghost you) at anytime if they’re not interested in you. This happens for a lot of good reasons, so be careful not to be mean to anyone.
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 aver 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.
Yeah there is, change your sexual preference to bisexual and match with a few guys.
Guaranteed to get matches if you show off big wads of cash in your pics, no matter what you look like.
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.
what apps have been around for less than 2-3 years?
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
Be interesting
Swiping right “too much” lowers your hidden “social score” which determines who you are shown to
I don’t swipe right all the time but I’m also not super picky
