Smart move, Gen Z. Those apps are all scams designed to maximize engagement and extract your money from you. They give you a bad mix of early false hope and eventual despair.
Love, Gen X.
Hi, Gen X. Some of us can tell that basically every app nowadays is like that, but sadly, there are still others who don't. But we're trying to stay clear of these scams and people like tate and musk.
Love, Gen Z
I confirm this, also Z person.
Just an anecdote, but I never paid for anything, and most of my exes were from tinder, as well as my current partner. Some were from jodel or instagram, but I’ve had the best luck by far with the dating apps.
I don’t really feel scammed, though they did probably extract a goodly amount of my personal data. But monetarily it was free, and I had a bunch of nice encounters as well as some really good relationships.
But I am a millennial, nearing 30s, so maybe it’s a generational gap
Have you used any recently? It could be that we're both right, as software just keeps getting worse for over the past few years.
Late summer I remade an account after getting over a relationship that previously ended, and found my current partner (though I did have to go through a few not so great dates to finally really click with someone, but that’s also true for what we used to go through back in the day, and probably for anything that has humans involved).
But I agree that the experience in the app itself was significantly worse, with the constant adverts and pop-ups and whatnot. I just endured them to connect with people, but definitely worse experience as an app than the last time I used it some years ago. But humans are humans in and out of the app, doesn’t really matter what the app is, as long as one can connect and move to other apps from there. Or, you know, real life 🙈
I met my wife through PoF, but this is exactly how Id describe dating apps. They are so designed to keep you checking the app constantly, pay for premium features and feel awful about yourself. In my situation it really was the only way I could meet anyone (was in my rotations of grad school, working 12 hour days), but the apps were like measurably depressing me
Glad it worked out for you guys in the end. There has to be a better way. I usually tell folks to get involved with mixed groups that are activity-based. There's all kinds of volunteer groups, athletics clubs, and hobby groups out there. Go where the people are, the group activity is a great ice breaker, and then hope to find someone in the group (or network with it to find someone). It's much better than praying to the app gods through the phone, IMO.
This might be a dumb question... but uh... what are the alternatives in the modern US?
How do people meet nowadays? Like there are no 3rd places left, I dont want to pay to be in some overmonitized club or some shit. I am long out of school. Meeting people seems next to impossible nowadays.
This is where I'm at. Everyone has told me dating at work is a really bad idea. I don't drink so I have no interest in trying to pick up a girl at a bar. And in general I've seen so many girls say they don't like guys approaching them in public.
Like it feels like all that is left is these apps, but girls don't seem to want to meet on there either. It feels like I'm missing something critical here on how to meet a girl at my age and it's frustrating me to no end.
Basically join hobby groups. Not sure if meetup.com is much of a thing any more but they had tons of different types of meet ups.
Dance classes usually have lots of single women if your hobby is more male oriented. You do not have to be a good dancer for the beginner classes.
I get that it can be frustrating to be constantly told that women do not want to be approached in public. I actually just looked up where to meet women after reading your comment and one article stood out because it was a woman who was trying to get hit on at the gym. She admitted that she is only up for being approached when she is getting water or leaving. Her showering that she was open to flirt with a specific person was by giving a smile which is something women generally say is absolutely not an invitation to flirt. She also mentioned giving bedroom eyes which I imagine is difficult for a guy to interpret on a sweaty woman. This woman turns out to be a dating coach.
I was lucky that Tinder was just starting out when I got a late start in dating.
The only way I've ever had luck on those apps is just by trying to make my profile funny instead of really lame and repetitive. Like, make one that actually stands out, even if it's just a big picture of you in a fish costume holding yourself, or something. It can certainly help if you get a sense for what other dude's profiles look like and intentionally do what will stand out from them, or what will point out the absurdity of them. Then, just wait. That's it, don't surf the app really, that's a pretty guaranteed way to lose hope on everything. If you do scroll, do it sparingly, and sparingly give out swipes, don't swipe on someone cause they're hot, swipe on someone because they either seem like someone you wanna go out with or because they're sending you some other form of signal that actually matters. After you get a match or two, you're gonna wanna swipe through the pile until you can distinguish the person who swiped on you from the blurry preview they give you, and then you can go from there based on whether or not they seem like a good fit or not, generally I opt towards yes even if they haven't put much effort in.
I dunno about tinder, but sometimes you can even delete your bumble profile and the app keeps puppeting around your account, and then you can return later on, and swipe through the pile, until you can distinguish them based on their preview. I've met like 7-8 girls this way and my profile barely even shows my face and it's all stupid jokey bullshit. I think my ELO's probably tanked but I don't really care that much atp. If you're really desperate there are ways to flub the sign-up process and make a totally new account, so you can reset your ELO if you've tanked it by swiping right a million times and getting nothing back.
by trying to make my profile funny instead of really lame and repetitive
Man, lame and repetitive sounded like such a good strategy though!
No point in feeling frustrated. Many women aren't ready to date or have interest in men strongly. Keep going and someone may or may not show up just keep living.
How old are you? It’s been years since I dated, but I had a decent amount of success on dating apps. It can take time to curate a good profile. Also, my understanding is that free options are nonexistent or flooded with fake OF profiles, so that might make it more difficult
I'm 27. I've been on and off on dating apps for a few years now. Very rarely get matches. Tried all the profile advice. Nothing works. Doesn't help you also have to filter through a sea of girls trying to pump their Instagram followers or OF subs and don't actually care about dating. It just feels like these apps have been nothing but a drain on my mental health with basically nothing to show for it.
Yeah, the Instagram and OF stuff wasn’t around when I was using dating apps. That sounds pretty difficult to get through. Seems like Match Group bought all the competition and ruined it from what I’ve heard.
I grew up learning you meet people at church. Too bad I'm an atheist.
It’s basically being patient until you happen to bump into a good match.
FWIW, there are atheist groups that serve similar functions. A friend of mine grew up going to the local "Secular Circle" every Sunday, because her parents wanted her to have the social benefits of church without any of the religious stuff, and she talks about how she intends to bring her kids there.
(Cough)
Are you inviting me to church?
Oh, (insert local deity name here) no. Just checking in. Don’t care either way.
Hobbies. If you like hiking find a hiking group. If you like board games find a board game group. If you like painting get in a class… you get the idea.
I'm late 20s/early 30s. Since ~2011 the only social media I used was Reddit. No Facebook, Twitter, etc, etc.
What you're saying is exactly how I met my now wife. I looked after myself, did shit I enjoyed, found community events, hobbies groups, lived life, met lots of people, made new friends. Eventually I asked one of the friends on a date and now my best friend is my wife and I can't be happier.
I will say, not having Facebook was a problem in some areas though. I missed out on group activities, group hobby chats, that sort of thing but I didn't care. Friends would invite me to some of them anyway. Also, It might have changed these days but a handfull of people refused to trade numbers, they wanted me to add them on Facebook which was impossible. I didn't let that get in the way either but it was kind of 'hard' to miss out on a potential friendship. It all worked out in the end for me.
Find local groups. Two notable ones for me are that I found a discord for my city for people looking for friends (which means stuff like regular board game events and the likes) and the kink community (ie, fetlife) regularly does similar (you don't treat that one as a dating site, but rather a way to find real life events where you meet people).
There's probably various other ways to find real life meetups that aren't for the explicit purpose of meeting people to date, but will find em anyway. Casual sports leagues, hobby oriented groups, co-workers, etc.
Most people meet partners through mutual friends and at work.
Unless you already have shit loads of friends this is not viable. And dating at work has almost gotten impossible with the risk of harassment.
Young people are fucked.
I met my wife at a dungeon, but that’s not for everyone. Bars also work
As a Xennial I wish I'd figured that out at their age. Fuck the people trying to monetize loneliness.
I'm just old enough to have missed dating apps and I often think about how grateful I am for that. My wife and I met the old fashioned way, on the forums for a mid-tier web comic.
Oohhhh I really want to guess which comic that was.
I know the Sam and Fuzzy forums were very lively but I'd rank that in a higher tier.
QC might qualify these days but my past self thought it was the best so I'll rule that out out of respect for younger me.
LFG was kinda like a lesser Nuclear Power but I've got no sense of their forums. The timeline's off there too, given the ballpark I'm assuming from your comment.
Dragon Tails was solid upper middle, also had a very healthy community forum.
Bob and George was definitely lower tier but in a fun way.
What was the one with the pink cat? Ahhh, Something Positive. I remember thinking that was great, but I don't really remember anything else about it.
Going further back, into possibly pre-burning-boards territory, there's what... El Goonish Shive and Unlike Minerva. I'm not sure how well-known Unlike Minerva was, but apparently EGS is still going strong.
Around there was College Roomies from Hell which opened me up to the whole Keenspot family, and there are a lot of directions that can go.
Ruling out XKCD since even if you don't like it, you have to acknowledge how widely loved or at least known it is. Probably same with Penny Arcade.
Aaaah, the list on the Shortpacked landing page is full of nostalgia.
I won't accept Mac Hall as being classified as anything less than top tier.
I think I'm gonna have to go with Real Life. Nice, comfortable, consistent. Cozy. Not universally known but a good solid regular webcomic. Has (oh, had) forums, fits the arbitrary timeline I have in my head.
Whaaaa, Mae Dean has certainly gone through some changes since I checked in last!
I might change my answer as I continue down memory lane here.
I wish I remember what it was.
Unless my wife is reading this. Then, haha jk! I totally remember....
I just wish there was a alternative for us introverts. Being a younger millennial(zillenial??? Idek), it's rough finding people. Esp being audhd and moving right before the pandemic and just not being able to predict people and catch their interest sigh
I've had good success on Hinge and also joining local discords that share my special interests. I however have no idea how long until the enshittification of Hinge so your experience may be different.
My experience on hinge and most dating apps is weird bc of where I live. 20mins either way to the next major city and I think it's a turn off that I'm a bit chub and still live with my mom which I can't do anything about bc genetics and trouble maintaining jobs 🙃
During the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 a lot of millennials and gen-x went back to the parental homestead, heck, my stepdaughter spent a couple of years with us a few years ago.
It's inconvenient when trying to date because your home is full of family which means you have to keep sexy times discrete (that went for us fogeys, too) but anyone who is going to decide that's a character flaw is probably not worth dating.
That's probably true....just wish it wasn't so hard dating in the south. I had to make it harder being like 75% gay on top of the AuDHD since I'm always fearful of the rejection whether it's dating or anything else at this point oop....
I blame enshittification. I met good people on Craigslist and then (after a soul searching break) met my wife on OK Cupid.
The alternative might be activity groups, but I've also seen reports that Gen Z folk are having less sex generally, not like it's too much trouble to find partners but aren't very driven to look. So it may be a correlative, not causal relationship.
Market dip blame {insert the youngest generation}
Green z are the new millennials, it seems
We are the next generations of generations.
Meh, I've had some good experiences using dating apps but only after grinding for months and wading through mountains of OF spam and unresponsive matches.
It sounds odd to say it, but before apps, when they were websites, these services were a lot more unique.
As apps, since match group owns them all, they all eventually degrade into Tindr but worse somehow.
The swiping for hot or not fundamentally is superficial and suited to hooking up. So why is it added to dozens of services claiming to make deeper connections?
The way I view it (despite personally exclusively using apps for hooking up) is that the swipe is the first filter, the bare minimum. Yes, it's superficial, but people are at least in part superficial. If you're not physically attracted to the person, it's not likely to work out.
You swipe hot on all the people who meet the threshold of being attractive to you, then you go through your matches' profiles to find out who is likely to have a compatible personality, then you chat and go out to find out who actually had a compatible personality. The superficial swiping is only the first step.
People who get deep connections, engaged, married, etc, stop using dating apps.
Short term dysfunctional hookups are more profitable for these companies.
The CEO of grindr once admitted he opposed gay marriage.
I agree. Tinder (and it's predecessor Grindr) were clearly all about "hooking up" with attractive people. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But if you're using this service hoping for more, you're going to have a bad time.
Similar to how Snapchat was clearly designed to send nudes but evolved into something else entirely.
I miss the glory days of okcupid and pof
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