Ask Lemmy

Having gone from the guy with no matches to getting good matches, in part from advice from female friends, here's what worked for me in order of priority:

1. De-red flag. Remember, men are about 5-10x as likely to commit acts of violence as women. So imagine you're looking at your profile as a third person, assuming there's a good chance you're a serial killer. Make sure your jokes are clearly jokes and can't be read as hinting at any extreme beliefs or even overall weirdness. Seriously, there's like a 90% chance that if you haven't done this already, you've got something on your profile that's terrifying to most women. Now a common faulty cognition I see is "I should tell her what other girls don't like about me as a warning". No, stop. That's not how you do it. Because girls will assume it's 1000% worse than what you're saying, and even worse the algorithm will nuke you if you get too many rejections. Instead, see step 4) and reject other girls who won't be into you.

2. Good pictures. Again, 1) comes into play here. No dark backgrounds. Nothing that looks like one of those pictures they show of suspects on the news. Outdoors is good. If you have pictures with people, great. If not, no sweat, just make it look good. Look up a guide on how to take a good selfie and use it.

3. Keep your written answers short. No one reads them anyway, unless they're really long and creepy. You're not going to convince her you're Shakespeare, she's really just checking to make sure you don't remind her of someone she had a terrible experience with.

4. Now all that being said, the best strategy for swiping is to be the opposite of most people. Don't just swipe on anyone who meets your attractiveness standards. Instead, swipe only on girls you'd really be excited to meet, and that you think would be excited to meet you too. Are you frugal? Don't swipe right on the model with a Gucci bag. I know it's hard. But you really have no chance of making it and dating her would make you miserable anyway. So swipe left and get the little boost that helps you meet a better match. I will say I've followed this strategy on Hinge which supposedly has a better algorithm for matching people, so I can't guarantee it for other sites.

Profile:

• full body pic
• face pic
• pic showing interests
• pic showing social life
• description taking about your interests and what you want to do (hiking, games, sports, clubs, whatever, open to new things, etc... Don't be shy about nerd shit)
• be honest.
• be positive.

Behavior:

• pick one day a week.
• pick one hour on that day, preferably the later half of your most normal schedule, or around 6pm otherwise.
• swipe for no more than 15 minutes/app in that hour.
• Most important: Look at people's profiles, be VERY picky. Swipe right ONLY on people you actually want to TALK to. If that's 3 out if 100 it's actually a good thing.
• do this for 3-6weeks if you're M4F.

The goal is to train the algorithm on the types of people YOU like. If you swipe right on everything it learns nothing and will show you people, and show you to people who share much less potential interest in a date.

This limited swipe schedule is also to combat brain-rot incelification and burnout. Sucks to be alone but go touch a tree and hang out with friends. No friends? I know it sucks shit but you gotta start there. Do the stuff you like doing around other people and take pictures. Helps with the profile, softens the loneliness, and you'll have people to confide in after a bad date.

Lastly, if you abused your account before(swiping right indiscriminately) it may be messed up. Let it sit a few weeks before trying again.

Data shows that something like 80% of guys on dating apps don't get any attention from women. I don't remember the exact figure. But dating apps are a tough demoralizing place for most men. I'd say branch out in your hobbies and focus on self improvement and hopefully you'll bump into the right person with some shared interest.

Are you going to therapy for your social anxiety and over thinking? Cuz even if you got a match on the apps, you're still going to face those issues when you actually meet up.

One thing I've seen reported in recent times is that men hardly show up to singles events and speed dating type things anymore. But that might be a lot of pressure for your social anxiety if you showed up somewhere and you were the only guy in a room of women.

I think it's swipe up 2x, swipe down 2x, swipe left 2x, swipe right 2x, B, A, Start

Disclaimer: I’m not straight, but when I used the apps I mostly matched with women, who were mostly cis and mostly het.

It sounds like you’re looking for a LTR. Tinder is mostly for HUs. Everyone I met on there was casual-only or wanted long term but like, desperately. Bumble wasn’t a significantly different crowd when I tried it, in spite of the hype. Hinge I heard was better for LTRs, with a questionnaire system and everything, but never tried. Overall, my impression was that lots of the “looking for something real” folks in the apps probably should’ve been prioritizing therapy and learning to love themselves before throwing themselves into another LTR. This leads to my main point at the bottom.

For more swipes/matches, top rec is almost always better photos, especially for straight men, but I would modify that recommendation slightly. I think you should first ask yourself some questions about your target audience.

Why: Let’s say you’re advertising yourself as a kind stable safe and hard-working man looking for a LTR. That profile, to be successful with your target audience, will easily scare away the casual crowd for lots of reasons. The sincere and detailed bio, the high quality face shots and full length profiles with your hobbies carefully framed in the background and at least one fancy outfit and picture of you and your dog, etc etc. All that will earn you high praise in the OLD profile support groups but IME can sometimes telegraph expectations that are daunting to many people you’d probably like to meet if given the chance. Depending on the level of polish on that LTR profile, you could inadvertently limit your marketability to a very specific subset of users who mostly lurk and windowshop, vet candidate pools thoroughly, and tend to bring a surprising number of their own expectations, many of which seem to have to do with your “stats.” Again, that’s if they even pull the trigger and I suspect many of them are skilled at talking themselves out of it.

As an alternative, just for kicks think about a hypothetical “fuckboi” version of your usual profile, complete with poorly lit bathroom selfies, lots of shirtless outdoor photos, badly cropped group pics at dark venues, and a bio that’s just a line from a Tarantino film. As unpolished as that profile is, I guarantee this alter ego will get more swipes than the one I described above, not because he’s prettier or fitter (it’s the same guy) but because he’s approachable to a greater number of users, many of whom are specifically looking for simplicity, zero long term expectations/possessiveness, and someone who won’t make them feel guilty for not calling. They also tend to match with others far more frequently. Those users are everywhere, so if you’re not getting matches at all, maybe ask yourself what of that fuckboi alter-ego actually expresses aspects of your personality, and consider incorporating a bit more of him.

Ultimately the apps weren’t built for courtship rituals. It’s just hard to generate chemistry with text and photos alone. Casual relationships are a totally valid and IMO more natural path to a LTR anyway. Those relationships can evolve with time and tend to be healthier, because fundamental aspects of compatibility are already explored and they begin with everyone’s cards down. Just my .02… GL

Edit: clarify wording to sound less like “go forth and be slutty”

sexy horny gay dudes are always ready to show you what a real sexual revolution looks like.

Posted this 2 years ago and dug it up for you!

Here to offer hope and advice to anyone that’s given up. I’m a 52-yo American male and have knocked it out the park with dating apps. In the 4-years since my wife left, thank god, I’ve had 15-20 dates and 5 steady gf’s for a bit. Getting married 11/24 if y’all want to come!

Pro tips:

• Post a variety of pics. Nothing controversial like guns, dead animals, any other women your age. Or your fucking truck/motorcycle/sports car. If your Confederate flag bed sheets are really important to filter people, go ahead I guess. If the person you’re looking at does not have a wide range of pics, red flag. Women are great at glamour shots. Take the worst pic of the bunch and assume that’s what they look like IRL. Worst case, you’re pleasantly surprised. (Happened to me many times!)
• Don’t be too judgmental. All you’re aiming for is a first date, see how it goes. What’s it cost a man? Dinner for two? Better yet, I dated a woman who said neither party should pay anything on the first date. If you don’t click, no one’s out anything. Go to a park, thrift storing, antique mall, whatever floats your boat. It costs nothing to walk around, talk and gauge each other’s interests and mutual attraction.
• Sorry, but this bit can be expensive. Sign up for half-a-dozen sites. If you’re fishing, it’s best to bait 6 poles vs. one, right? Try the free options of course, see how it goes, but spread yourself around as much as possible. You never know. And that bears repeating. You never know what will happen. More on that shortly.
• Keep initial communication short and sweet. Too much gets lost in text, too many misunderstandings. "Hey! Love (something in their post that you’re seriously interested in, or why else are you contacting them)! (question about something you want to know about them)? Want to (go to the park, get coffee, go thrift storing, whatever)? And then go on the damned date, and do it ASAP, before something stupid happens like a misunderstood text, other plans/dates cropping up, whatever. Just go. If I have to say, “Don’t be an ass and pressure for the date.”, you’re not ready for a relationship.

How I met my fiancé:

She hit me up on eHarmony. Gods that site sucks. Only date I ever got there. Blew her off because her pics were… not so great. She had nothing interesting to say about herself, barebones bio. 3-months later I’m revisiting and saw her “like”. “Yeah, what about this girl again?” She posted more about herself, and more attractive pics and here we are.

You basically need to buy premium. It sucks and is predatory but it makes a huge difference. I would drop $20 on boosts Thursday afternoon and end up getting a date for Friday/Saturday maybe 2/3 of the time. About 75% of my matches came from paying for buffs.

ymmv, but for me, the cheat code is to get out of the app asap and meet in person once the app let's you find someone.

imo, it is best for their business to keep a person in for the engagement.

best of luck on your search!

My friend bought a camera, learned to take good pics and we made ourselves a photo session. It helped, I got more matches, but I couldn't get along with any of them. Well, I did with one until I fucked it up…

Anyway, I ended up joining an AuDHD meet up group on FB and soon after my now girlfriend posted and we're now 1.5 year together

1. Be rich
2. Don't be poor

I think that's the only legit cheat code

Tell us more about your current usage. What are you doing and where is it failing?

Some of the other posts already hit the highlights. Have a variety of well lit photos. Your profile should be short, but with some unique-ish hooks for people to talk about (eg: "reading 'such and such' for my book club!" - several things for someone to ask about there).

When you do match with people, don't send generic messages. Don't just send "hey". Go read https://nohello.net/en/ for a post about that in other contexts.

After you've had one or two successful exchanges, clear any deal breakers you might have (eg: "really enjoying this conversation but wanted to make sure you saw on my profile I have a toddler. Are you okay with that?"). If that succeeds, ask them out.

Don't provide too many choices. People get overwhelmed easily. "I'd love to talk more about (whatever we we were talking about). Do you want to go on a date? I like (local bar), but (other bar) in your neighborhood looks fun, too!". Two choices. They'll probably pick one.

More specific advice may be available if you tell us more about your specific experience

Yep, there's a cheat code.

1. Be attractive.
2. Pay them.

For "be attractive" a lot of people think the requisite level of attractiveness is unattainable for them. Its not. Be decently in shape, groom yourself, have some style in the way you dress. The other half is taking good photos. Take photos that look good, that you look good in, and which create a vision for what the best version of your life looks like.

And then pay them. Tinder, bumble, and hinge basically have a monopoly on the market. Its pay to play. You can get matches without paying, but it is a lot fewer and a lot less.

After a long discussion with all of my co-workers comparing everyone's experience, it would be safe to assume that they do not work effectively. They are a commercial product whose entire purpose is to make money. The algorithms are designed to keep people on the app as long as possible. They don't work on purpose. Every single person in the discussion that met their SO on an app, were marched because some sort of fluke or exception. It only works when the pattern is broken. We were even calling people's SOs up to hear their full stories.

be hot

This may sound like an odd question, but why are you dating? What are you seeking out that you don't have now?

I guess what I'm trying to say is my philosophy is to not go out of the way to find someone directly, but rather build one's own self confidence and communal hobbies that naturally draws you to people, friends or love interests alike.

Ironically I ended up meeting my soul mate within a year of committing to being content with being single. That altered my mindset and I guess made me more attractive and focused on self-improvement.

Be a girl.

They absolutely have gotten way, way, way worse. I deleted all of them, despite 1.) being single, 2.) wanting to date again, and 3.) having met multiple dates on multiple apps in the past. They're simply not like they used to be, in part because of Match Group buying them all up and in part because the other non-Match Group options followed that same "successful" model.

It honestly feels like the only way to succeed is to pay, but EVEN THEN, using Tinder for example, you'll still be pestered to pay even more to "make sure your messages are seen" and most of the likes they suddenly turn on once you pay will be fake, bot profiles. To an absurd degree these days. And the prices are outrageous, with many of them having the gall to charge WEEKLY now.

It's not a you thing, it's a "the apps really, really suck" thing. There's a reason so many people, men and women alike, complain about these apps and insist they must "only see the worst matches." Because they almost certainly do. If they send you your best matches, you wouldn't subscribe anymore. If they send you bad matches, plus "good" fake matches, they think it'll keep your hopes up. Except it's obvious when all the fake profiles look the same, are exactly 99 miles away from you, etc...etc...

If you figure it out, let me know. I am also in my 30s and have never had any success with dating websites/apps. I've only ever had success meeting people the natural way.

Personally I wouldn't even bother with dating apps. Date someone from work or go to a singles event. I've had great success with those methods.

If you have social anxiety, that's the bottleneck here.

Don't stress about the apps. I'm an attractive guy, almost always in a relationship, and in any of the times I was single, I never got a date through a dating site.

My wife said the "no fuckboys" line in my profile made her laugh.

On the apps, the cheat code is paying up. Even then, it won't guarantee any success. Last app I used was bumble, around the end of 2023, which was on its way of enshittification, but still worked muuuuuuuuuch better than tinder. Got lucky and met my current gf there (4th or 5th woman I managed to go out on a date from that app, out of many that I chatted with).

My main problem which makes me rely on the apps is that I simply rarely feel like going outside. Not doing any group activities seriously hurts your chances of finding anyone interesting.

Real life wise, your best bet would be trying dance classes, especially any that are supposed to be danced in pairs

Cheats? Never tried these myself, but I was being told that some dating apps use their own ELO system for "rating" users, and they try to keep the best matches hidden, so allegedly you can try to game the ELO by rejecting more ppl than necessary and on Hinge you can cheat by leaving the age range completely open (18-99)...

... or I guess beg family/friends for help to completely bypass dating apps I guess

Disclaimer I have never even dated & my only "dates" from a dating app ended in complete disasters, so... I wouldn't trust what I have just wrote

its always attractive or not, race also matters because people are that vain; white people and attractive would get more hits, and it goes down the list least likely. do they ask income , and some ask about your "size"