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My dating app experience as a "conventionally attractive woman who is attracted to men" has been, getting presented with a seemingly endless stream of men, most of whom are afraid or unable to show any modicum of what they are really like (by the very nature of the medium) or make any kind of move. Those who are able to go out of their way to make dates happen (and it really is these people who stand out because it's impossible to be proactive with that when you have one million matches) are the people who think going on one date means it time to have sex now. It's epic.

few things are more dystopian than seeking romance under capitalism

Its fucking wild that the capitalists managed to insert themselves into our sex lives

I knew someone who worked for OKCupid pre-acquisition - Match basically took the model that recommended people and made sure it never recommended the most compatible people to each other, and instead prioritized recommending the profiles of users most likely to waste each others' time to one another. The individual in question had met their partner via OKC some years prior to working there, they were disgusted and quit. Since that firm owns Tinder and most of the name brands* I'd expect them to all work about the same in that regard but with tweaks they test on the different user bases which they link across systems (*except Bumble, the re-branded Badoo after having bought that one out, and one or two others that almost nobody uses).

Nothing to add other than grab your old phones and make fake profiles, find your real one and like it! Then ghost those fake profiles. If the "algorithm" thinks you're moderately desired as a guy but already burnt out and will just waste everyone's time, they'll spoonfeed you matches.

granted its been like 5+ years since i was on the apps, but it sounds like the experience is roughly the same. a bunch of crap notifications to create demand for a bunch of ads, a few matches where the people/bots are asking for credit card info, a cluster of flaky ghost matches, and maybe 1-2 matches with people who seem OK but you gotta carry the conversation, their pictures are from a decade+ ago and very misrepresentative.

then we would have an awkward meal where i pay, and then i would be relieved to go home alone so i could relax.

a few random highlights from my last match, i helped someone on the first date also transport a large dining room table by strapping it to the roof of their car. they didn't have any tie down stuff (keep ratchet straps in my car). they were getting over some respiratory thing and coughing the whole time, so we didn't make physical contact. i saw their house though , and it was like someone had just moved out but left random garbage bags of loose junk.

anyway, they were feeling better a week later so i suggested tea somewhere near us both to have a low pressure get-to-know-each-other convo, and they countered with an invitation to a gathering at theirs (the place with no furniture) to "meet their entire polycule" of like 7 people... none of whom could help move furniture, i guess?

i thought it was like a cowardly way to wave me off, but they were insistent, enthusiastic and unprompted gave me this inside-baseball bio of the ENTIRE 'cule complete with eccentricities and prior romantic dramas. to be clear, this person and i were like almost 40 at this point.

i went ahead and called it there. sometimes i go along to get along more than i should and it's given me a lot of amusing anecdotes in life, but at my age I've started saying no more easily.

They were great 10 years ago before tinder ruined everything. Fuck you tinder and your algorithm based bullshit. The likelihood is there are people that match in your area but the app won’t show you cos it wants to upsell all the fees n shit and then still not show you anyone anyway. The match.com model worked perfectly.

She needs someone that can take care of her. I can't even take care of myself.

A therapist would pick this a part but I'm not one.

Dating apps have profit incentives for you to never find love on it. All of my best and longest relationships weren't from apps, but were they just a miracle of a broad social network and not hitting some other dating scene. That shit is dead.

I went back and forth for a while in my 20s trying to find someone and feeling this crushing loneliness and despair that I'd never find a partner and then I just stopped caring. The first few dates I got were terrible.

First one we talked for hours in a dunkin' donuts and I think neither of us could figure out how to end the conversation so we kinda ended up arguing about politics. I burned the shit out of my tongue on the tea. Neither of us reached out after that.

Another we met and had lunch, ended up walking up and down the street window shopping and chatting, didn't feel like a terrible experience at the time but with hindsight it was a rather awkward mess and I just wasn't good at picking up on her subtleties.

Another one was just us chatting online for a while, she was living across the country from me and I just didn't pick up on flirting at all so I just kinda kept talking about nerd shit and it worked for a while until my suspicions got the better of me and I just ghosted her after thinking it was a romance scam because why else would someone talk to me and keep sending unsolicited risque photos.

Last one was the one that made me give up, we started chatting, had a few common interests. We had talked about what flavor of leftism we subscribed to, I said I was ML while she said she was into market socialism. We hopped into a voice call with one another to play Stellaris multiplayer a few days later, got to like 50 years in, I snaked my borders out and destroyed the infinity machine and that upset her, 10 minutes later she just quit out of nowhere, ghosted me, and then randomly every 6 months would come back and insult me the most unrelated shit imaginable until I finally just blocked her.

I'm happy to be alone. I've found enjoyment in pursuing who I am and I don't feel like I need someone else to validate that any more. Doesn't help that every time I've tried to test the waters it's so abysmally awful to even try that I have no incentive to try any more.

I have to thank dating apps for helping me realize I'm asexual. I got maybe 10 matches in 7 years of using the things. I remember talking to a friend of mine about it, and they were confused about why I got so few, since their experience was getting like dozens of matches per day.

I said something like "yeah but no one actually wants to date and fall in love, right? It's just like a social pressure thing?" And I was quickly informed that actually the majority of people want to do romantic and sexual things of their own accord and don't have to be begged or pushed into it. I genuinely had no idea lmao

I quit the apps years ago and don't miss the experience at all. I'll take a lot more alone time if it means not having to negotiate the dating market and give horrible companies my data and money.

my dating app was always "date people from your job that work in different departments"

requires one hell of a lot of luck it's cool that i rolled a nat 20 on that one

a close friend used okcupid and got a rock solid relationship out of it but the person had to move across the country for her and also it was more then 10 years ago

otherwise this shit seems dystopian

I was extremely fortunate enough to find success on one of those apps but it took me 6 months of trying to find someone. As a vegan, heavily tattooed and pierced, far leftie 5’10” male who wears Robert Smith makeup I am automatically incompatible with like 99% of the population though.

I've had one good date from the apps, it was Hinge specifically, but I'm an awkward nerd with self esteem issues. I didn't ghost, but I did awkwardly end things.

Since then I've realized that the traditional dating scenes aren't for me and the app dating is even worse. There is something so impersonal about the apps that made the meetup more awkward than an ice-breaker at a strange bar.

die of lonliness die of covid trying not to be alone

I used them for the first time about 2 years ago after a split, and i was on ALL of them. They're all the same, just catering to different crowds with a different UI. Whether or not you vibe with the person you match with is a crapshoot.

I dont really have anything to say that hasn't been said (masc presenting agender, was open to all types on the apps), just another symptom of capitalism selling us love and relationships. If you didnt plunk down 5 bucks or whatever, your profile would get much less action.

Would i use them again? Unfortunately yes, im pretty shy and feel much better interacting online for a while before meeting (unless its a quick hookup type thing). Would i ever recommend them? Hell no. Does it make sense? Also hell no.

I will say one thing in defence of the apps and it's that the times I have used them I have met some people with personalities that I absolutely never would've met otherwise because there's no way they would've been the kind of person I would've found at a club or bar or whatever. The only possible way I would've met those people is via knowing someone that knows them that puts me in the same place as them. Ok so I didn't have long term relationships with those people either but they were really cool people and I value having met them.

The whole thing is dystopian too though.

It sounds like your location sucks and the apps are a reflection of that.

First one, said hey and they unmatched, second one I waited for them to say hey, then replied and they unmatched.

I hope you said more than literal "hey", because that's going to filter out quality people. See also: https://nohello.net/en/

so don't use them

I think everyone misses the key part to dating apps especially, which is that looks rules the roost. You need some personality to progress further than that, but the reality is that if you're hot you'll be swimming in matches, and of those matches a fair few will happily go on a date. They'll even look past your weird quirks and see them as endearing.

Veggly has a maximum password size?! Lol

Edit: i mean stupid low, can't use autogenerated 30char passwords, not can't paste shakespeare

I tried Feeld, and given my specs it was mainly cuck/vixen couples looking for bulls, which is not my scene, and would surely be unsatisfying for the cuck. Did meet a couple of poly ladies I went on first dates with and stayed friends with one, met a single poly-curious lady who read about Feeld on the Atlantic and dated her for several months. Only app that was usable without paying, until they rewrote it and it stopped working whether you payed or not.

Only other one I tried was Tinder (after I broke up with the Atlantic lady). Took a while, mostly saw the same few people, many of whom I knew from outside Tinder because dating in middle age, after a divorce, in a small Southern city is weird. Talked to a couple of ladies at the edge of my search range, eventually met my dream girl (close to my age, where have you been all my life? Oh, both married to someone else) and have been with her for a year and a half of smooth sailing. But I don't generally recommend the process to anyone. If you're a man looking for women, you'll pay for all the upsells just to be able to see who liked you and to actually be seen, and you'll develop a fine eye for catfish. If you're a woman looking for men, you will see a bunch of dicks you didn't want to see, spend hours cleaning out your messages, and develop a fine eye for catfish. It's just... not good for anyone.

They’re certainly not great but I’ve had quite a bit of success with them over the years and met some great people. There’s not much space to be genuine or show much about who you actually are through a short bio and minimal text conversations so I think it’s best to view them purely as a means to get to a first date where you can properly meet someone. I would always try to schedule a date within the first day or two of matching with someone before being buried within their feed of dozens/hundreds of new matches every day. Spending weeks messaging trying to get to know someone first is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Don’t get your hopes up just for matching with someone or take it too personally if you get ghosted, it’s just the nature of the game. I think my fiancée and I exchanged less than a dozen messages before meeting up and instantly clicking in person, it’s the surest way to know if you’re compatible or not

Kind of a tangent, but I have been trying to brainstorm how a federated (like lemmy) dating app could work for a few months now, but haven't had much luck figuring out moderation and preventing abuse. Obviously, showing profiles and likes would be relatively trivial, but allowing people to contact each other gives so many options for abusive behaviors. There is also a reliance on site moderation to not be creeps, and that doesn't have an easy answer either.

My best idea so far is that people would make public internet facing profiles where they could send likes to each other, but the other party would not receive any notification of a like. If two people liked each other they could get some kind of notification and maybe an easy way to send off platform communications, like matrix or signal, in order to prevent snooping by site moderators.

Regardless, this would still suck to moderate and prevent spam.

i have no hope and no reason to have hope

Having a picture of yourself with a dog did it for me