‘It’s quite soul-destroying’: how we fell out of love with dating apps::For a decade, apps have dominated dating. But now singles are growing tired of swiping and are looking for new ways to meet people – or reverting to old ones
‘It’s quite soul-destroying’: how we fell out of love with dating apps::For a decade, apps have dominated dating. But now singles are growing tired of swiping and are looking for new ways to meet people – or reverting to old ones
This has definitely been my experience. 8 years after my last relationship and I’m still single. I’m an average looking guy, I put up nice pictures, I filled out the profile, I spent time crafting a good opening message, etc… I had maybe 30-50 conversations, most of which quickly died out, some just wanted to keep talking for weeks before we met, at the end I think I ended up with less than ten actual dates, none of them went to a second date.
My first therapist even suggested an experiment (edit: this was actually my idea,but he supported it): replace my profile pictures with those of a male model and see if I get tons of messages or it stays the same. I ended up getting about 3 or 4 more messages total then usual, none of them went anywhere either.
You had 30-50 matches over eight years? Where do you live, bumblefuck?
Also the apps aren’t for conversations. They are for meeting people. If you are trying to have a lengthy conversation on Tinder, you’re putting screws in with a hammer.
Nope! Manhattan, the polar opposite of Bumblefuck! The problem there is the sheer amount of people, even average or below average women will get bombarded with 10s or 100s of matches a day and just as many messages, so you just get lost in the crowd if you’re not a perfect 10. Also there’s a lot of dudes in the city that are just creepy as fuck. I’m obviously not good with women, but these guys make me look like Casanova. Women almost always have their guard up because of that. I just moved to Miami 2 weeks ago and it’s a breath of fresh air (both literally and figuratively haha) to have strangers be friendly and want to talk to you.
I was never trying to have in depth conversations with these women, I wanted to jump from the match right to the date. They’re the ones that wanted to wait days or weeks until a date happened.
I mean I live in Brooklyn and I get about one date a month. Probably more if I hit the apps every day instead of just tinder. And I’m a pretty average guy with a big deal breaker.
I’d love to see more of what guys who are failing are doing differently than me.
I lived by Park Slope (Windsor Terrace) for a year (moved out of NYC in June) and yeah I got a fair amount of matches, but half of them never turned into actual dates because people were too busy with their lives. I’ll admit that I did get more matches when living in Brooklyn than when I lived in Manhattan, but as you’re aware, Brooklyn is fucking huge.
What was your therapist’s theory they were trying to test, that you might be ugly? Seems a very odd thing to ask you to do.
It was my idea but he supported it, pretty much testing to see if my pictures were the issue or not.
Some people say to never use selfie shots, others say it’s fine. Some say to have only pictures of you with no one else, others say it’s fine. It’s difficult to figure out what actually “works”.
I’m guessing they knew that it likely wasn’t a problem with being ugly, so the therapist did this ‘experiment’ as a way of demonstrating that. Seems pretty solid to me, actually.
Yeah it was my idea but he supported it, and pretty much wanted to help me prove that it wasn’t my appearance, just shitty apps. He said he had a bunch of clients that were in the same boat as me. I work in IT and do programming on the side, so I have an insight into how these things work, and of course if you actually find someone the app loses your business, which is bad for them, so it’s beneficial for them to string you along.