Ask Lemmy

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 keep you a customer/product.

People are getting savvy to it now, and completely moving away from online dating. We'll see if non-shit services make a comeback.

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, at best, a better way of picking who to date.

Otherwise, online roleplaying might push all the buttons you need. Or therapy, if you want to handle your anxiety better.

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 attractive.
2. Don't be unattractive.

If that fails, try being filthy rich.

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.

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...

Be a girl.

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.

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.

Swiping right "too much" lowers your hidden "social score" which determines who you are shown to

Online dating is for the birds. Meet me IRL or don't meet me at all.*

* currently here, btw

The cheat code to dating is don't use the fucking apps unless you are a legitimate adonis who doesn't need to.

Go out and find groups that do things you like to do, make friends, then you'll meet people organically.

Edit: from a guy who used dating apps for 2 years and had a 6 dates from them, but in the same time frame had 2 IRL based dates, one still friends with, the other is my SO of 8 years.

Never used any apps but I've gotten some decent connections and a few meetups from craigslist (back when when it had personals ads) and (believe it or not) more recently, reddit. Just write literate messages that are responsive to what the other person wrote, instead of being generic.

Also, proofread your responses very thoroughly before sending. Make sure that the grammar and punctuation is all perfect. The slightest error can be a huge negative in how well your response is received. Why is that? I don't know. But I've seen multiple people comment on this. Some have come out and told me that they responded to me because of it. It really matters.

Reddit has apparently just ditched its PM system in favor of a chat system. That seems pretty terrible for those of us who prefer to write carefully.

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

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

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

Type "power overwhelming" in chat

Be interesting