What's YOUR experience with dating apps?

Efficient-Baker1694 · 2025-02-27T17:23:50+00:00

I’ve been on three of them for months. 0 matches and 0 likes. I’m not even swiping right on every woman either. I swipe on ones where I find them attractive and/or think we would get along very based on our common interests in the hope of dating each other. Still nothing.

Muscletov · 2025-02-27T16:53:22+00:00

I only became somewhat succesful after I reached <15% bodyfat and showed off my body (the dreaded "gym mirror selfie"). Plus, I replaced my glasses with contact lenses and became more non-chalant.

Psykotyrant · 2025-02-27T18:54:56+00:00

I went in no expecting much, but determined to give it as fair as possible shoot as possible.

I made accounts on Hinge, Meetic, Tinder and OKcupid. I always strived to make profiles as complete as possible, with many good to great photos, and complete resumes.

And I paid for the premium tiers of services. On all of them.

And what did I got?

I swiped on thousands of profiles, sent hundreds of likes.

I was truly impressed in a bad way by the sheer mediocrity of most women’s profiles. Pics that are so bad, I could have gotten something better from the camera of a Nokia 3310.

Profils that are so bare bones, I’m left wondering why they bothered opening the account to begin with. Pics of walls, of the back of their head.

I was baffled to see, that, yes, the women are looking en masses for 6 feet tall men, and that also they need to be leftist, for some reasons.

Single moms. Tons of them.

In return, I got spammed by filipino and African accounts (I’m in Europe), got plenty of offers for Instagram/onlyfans, got plenty of very verbose messages that said « Hi » and was generally feeling like a worthless human being.

MikeArrow · 2025-02-27T16:52:42+00:00

What experience? Lol. I had a Bumble account for a while, no subscription just wanted to see if I even had a chance. Swiped on and off for months, zero matches. Eventually got one (1) single match. Talked to her for about a month but nothing eventuated and it fizzled out. Closed the app and chalked the whole thing down as a waste of time unless you've got a six pack.

disayle32 · 2025-02-27T19:36:05+00:00

My most recent foray lasted a few months. I got maybe half a dozen matches. All but one ghosted me. That last one agreed to a date and I thought it went very well. She had a lot of cool interests and was interested in coming to see the play I was in at the time. She told me about the book she was writing, which sounded like it would be a great read once it was finished. We also talked about seeing other plays together, as well as going laser tagging and playing DND. As we parted ways, she said she was interested in getting together again...and then she ghosted me too. After I paid for the date, of course.

Fuck dating apps. They are an absolute cancer on human society in their current form.

onlypham · 2025-02-27T20:43:04+00:00

It I as awful and broke my self confidence. Never again. Do not recommend.

Knife_up_your_butt · 2025-03-01T14:56:44+00:00

35yo man, western europe, Hinge, Bumble, when I first joined Hinge I got like 3-4 likes per week. Now that I've been lifting for a little over a year, got lean and got professional photos when I joined Bumble (+ paid for 1 week) I got 70 likes in 4 days.

The women weren't bad, over half of them were physically appealing. But I'm autistic so I got zero dates out of it.

PrimateOfGod · 2025-02-27T16:48:59+00:00

I’ve had matches on them, but it was like every other month, and half the time it was someone with catfish photos or it was someone I really did find attractive but they didn’t put any effort into conversations

RandHomman · 2025-02-27T17:30:34+00:00

Waste of time in my case. The things that makes women attracted to guys like me can't be shown on pictures so nahh. I'm kinda good looking but not that photogenic. I get way more results in real life than on dating apps.

Purple_Cruncher_123 · 2025-02-27T17:50:51+00:00

Around 28-33, before meeting my now-wife on Hinge. For most of it, I sort of passively swiped every day or two, but spent very little time actually using it. Only used it earnestly for about 6 months leading up until when I met the wife.

Tinder/Bumble: was mostly a wasteland full of bots. I did get a few dates, but of all of them I'd say maybe 2 were quality.

Hinge: for whatever reason, this one app in particular was very effective for me. Seems to have fewer issues with bots at the time. But I had like maybe 12-20 dates in a 3-month period where I really used it actively. Still had a lot of flakes, though some did circle back after the initial message like 3 months later. It was kind of amusing, but I also ran into one of the Bumble matches here, who initially rejected me on Bumble because she became serious with another guy. We actually went out on a date during Valentines' night (it went nowhere).

Mind you, I was like 32 at the time, 5'3" (though slim-average), so not exactly chad-tier. It did feel much easier than at like 28 though, and never mind like 24ish when Tinder first came out. I think I had like 3 matches the first week back then and it became a ghost town after that, so much so that I never used it again until like 5 years later.

PlainTundra · 2025-02-27T17:58:16+00:00

None. I never used them.

CofeeHideCrimsonMind · 2025-02-27T20:09:57+00:00

Not on these apps anymore as swiping is a huge time sink but IIRC:

Profile: 29, College Educated (BSc. Engineering Physics), 5'7, about 22% Body Fat (pretty chubby). Most pics were selfie pics and pics of me cooking

Over the course of 3 Months, I received 35 matches. Of those 35;

• 13 did not even respond to a hello text.

• 12 were quite unresponsive and so the convo went nowhere

• 2 were pretty obvious scams (i.e. Send me some money and I'll email you nudes.)

• Only 8 were ladies I would say I had great convos with. Of those 8, I was only able to set up a date with 3...

9% success rate....

cromulent_weasel · 2025-02-27T20:58:16+00:00

40s, M, not in the US. My experience was that as soon as I created a profile (within a week or two) I was deactivating it as I was seeing someone. Used Hinge.

As a bit of an overthinker I used that to my advantage, and my profile wasn't so much 'this is who I am' as 'imagine going on a date with me or doing activities with me'. Basically every picture/prompt, I was thinking 'how will this get the kind of woman who I want to respond to my profile to engage with it?'.

I went on a total of 3 dates with 3 people in 1 month. The first one was a disaster, I got stood up in the second one and the third one was great.

That sounds like quite a fantastic hit rate you have there.

In total, I was in the app for around a month, but most of the time was with my profile paused and I was just talking to people I'd matched with.

Yep. Most people who are new I think get snaffled up quickly. It's the profiles which are there forever, those people need to reassess what they are doing or take a break from the apps.

MyNinjaYouWhat · 2025-02-27T21:49:49+00:00

Non-existent lmao. Never had an account there cause the last time I was single for more than a few months, it was the year 2010 on the calendar. All I know is from this subreddit and r/Tinder

Anyways, out of all places to look for girlfriend, what man in his right mind goes to a place where male to female ratio is about as promising as on the construction site? Completely understandable why are women signing up, but men?..

Sonia314 · 2025-02-28T10:36:51+00:00

37, 25lb overweight, college student. I made an extremely wordy profile on okcupid a few months ago. I got about 1500 likes and 150 messages in the first week, many of them high quality. I went on 1 date from it but ended up having enough opportunities in my community that I haven’t logged in in a long time.

soontobesolo · 2025-02-27T17:32:39+00:00

50+M, overweight/chubby. I was on the apps for around a year. Met all kinds of people, many of them awesome, many of which I am still friends with. Dated a dozen or two, had various degrees of relationships with many of them. Lots of sex, I had many awesome and beautiful ladies to pick from. Helped me get my game back!

Sure, lots of duds too but they don't all work out and shouldn't be expected to.

I bought premium and picked from those who swiped on me, mostly. Usually had around 30-50 in the "cache" I could choose from.

I had fun. Now I'm focused on a gal I met IRL.

I_DOM_UR_PATRIARCHY · 2025-02-27T17:11:58+00:00

Apps have worked really well for me as a man. I really prefer being able to connect with people who I know are looking for the same thing I am. In the old way of doing things, trying to meet girls was a pain because most of the girls you meet aren't looking to date (because they're already seeing someone or whatever).

With the apps you can talk to hundreds of girls and line up dates every night of the week if you have the energy for it (which I don't).

I think there are two downsides: The first is that it can get overwhelming if you match with a ton of people at once. It's just hard for me to be clever and flirty in more than one or two simultaneous message threads. Initially I would match with a ton of girls because it was a nice ego boost but it just didn't work out because there was no way I could keep up with them all and it was super draining. Plus, it's not really fair to any of the girls.

The second is that having so many option to swipe through can easily lead to a bad mindset where you don't form a connection with anyone because you're emotionally spread thin and you keep thinking that there's an even better choice around the corner. I heard someone call that a "maximizer" sort of approach, when really the value in a relationship comes from building a connection not finding the ideal starting point.

So I've started being super selective about who I match with, and I try to limit myself to engaging with only one or two girls at a time who I actually really like. My main qualification is that the girl has to be an active reader because I am and I like talking about books and ideas, and that also makes the dates and conversations flow smoothly.

If you take that approach, the apps work very, very well.

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Present-Afternoon-70 · 2025-02-27T16:40:45+00:00

They inventive the wrong things if youre looking for a relationship. If youbjust want to fuck it is good as long as you understand your market value for lack of a better term.

ta06012022 · 2025-02-27T17:47:05+00:00

I'm 26 now and I've been using dating apps since I downloaded tinder back in college at 19 or 20. There have been long periods of time when I've paused my account and deleted the app, but I'm still using my original tinder account from 6+ years ago. I've also used hinge, bumble, and raya.

I've always done well on the apps and have met dozens of women from them. During most of that time, I was generally looking for something casual, but I've also found a relationship from hinge. I graduated from college in 2020 and moved to NYC for my job later that year. At that point there weren't a lot of other options for meeting women because of covid closures and restrictions, so the apps were absolutely essential for me during those first 6-9 months in the city. It feels like the apps less active today, but they still work.

Overall I think apps shouldn't be your only way of meeting people, but they're a good tool to include in the toolbox. I mostly met women in person during college, but meeting in person has been much harder post college. Apps are game changers in expanding that pool of dating prospects out to a broad set of women in the city vs. your social or professional circle.

At this point I've been seeing a woman I met on Hinge since last summer. I've paused my accounts and deleted the apps months ago, but I'm thinking about pulling the trigger and fully deleting my accounts.

ArkAngelEV · 2025-02-27T17:51:06+00:00

In the past week, 2 major metropolitan cities in the US. 11 matches all expired on bumble. Lately it feels like bumble is completely dead

Dismal-Alfalfa-7613 · 2025-02-27T20:05:46+00:00

My experience was fine, especially with time when I got s bit more experience, recognized what I'm looking for and learned to see the markers of undesirable qualities for me, and unmatched/blocked them immediately instead of "giving them a chance" and dragging it out.

Found a few short term relationships and situationships, several friendships, and my current boyfriend. Had my fair share of heartbreaks and pain, as is usual in life.

I mean, it's just a tool, so it's about how you use it.

aslfingerspell · 2025-02-28T03:10:04+00:00

Myself: Mid/late 20s man, shorter than average, professional job in suburbs. Exercises regularly but mostly cardio, on higher end of "normal" weight, so fit but not muscular. I like to cook, journal, and try new restaurants but have otherwise stereotypical introvert hobbies (video games, reddit, YouTube, movies). Autistic, lives at home with parents. I get 4-7 on Photofeeler but it's very unpredictable and I'm still finding my style. I have a filled out profile that avoids the most obvious mistakes i.e. mirror selfies.

My Experience: Since the new year I've swiped thousands of times across various apps and have less than 10 matches total, 1 from Hinge and the others from Tinder. Can't remember my Tinder data off the top of my head but it was a match rate of less than 0.5%.

Most of my Tinder matches were because I use Platinum and the free monthly Boost (Tinder even tells you if a match was achieved because of this). I sent out a unique message to everyone. 2 replied, both of which turned out to be scammers/looking for followers. Others unmatched.

My one match on Hinge unmatched after I tried to nail down a time for a first date. I gave a time and place between our locations and she replied that we could do something else. I asked when she'd be available and I got unmatched.

Junior_Ad_3086 · 2025-02-28T05:25:11+00:00

i'm 34m living in a big city but i've only used dating apps when traveling/living abroad as a digital nomad. when i'm actually living somewhere long-term i prefer long-term relationships and i don't look for them on the apps because the women i would want are not very likely to be on there and i cba vetting complete strangers either. none of my ex gfs were on the apps when (or before) i met them and none of the women i met off the apps were women i'd want to get serious with, so that only reinforces my view on that.

when i did use the apps though, it was like shooting fish in a barrel and a lot of women i matched with were very eager to go on dates and have the whole experience be reciprocal in one way or another. nothing like men complain about when using dating apps in the US but this was in places like SEA or LATAM, not the west. i definitely wouldn't have this kind of experience in western europe or america.

i've used the apps on and off for almost a decade, ran into some women who were looking for handouts, were outright professionals or trying to scam me but those were easy to spot and filter out. no particularly crazy stories but i've definitely learned that a lot of women are not taking guys at their word when it comes to what they're looking for, try to change the whole paradigm of the situation and lash out/get hurt when it doesn't work out like they envisioned.

for reference i'm a 6'2 white guy in decent shape but with a pretty average face. i make a good living but don't exactly advertise it. never really struggled dating in western europe but my options weren't as plentiful as they were in some of these other places. i honestly feel like it would be slim pickings on the apps for me in let's say the US, at least when it comes to women i actually might be interested in.

nefnaf · 2025-02-28T05:31:55+00:00

Context: 30sM

One time, I installed Tinder on a Thursday afternoon, and was sharing a bed with a woman from the app on Friday night. We ended up dating for a year (she's now an ex).

Another time, I installed CoffeeMeetsBagel, ended up going on dates with about 6-7 different women in the span of about a month. One of them stuck and we dated for a year until I broke it off.

Technical-Minute2140 · 2025-02-28T06:44:49+00:00

Wasted a lot of money on bumble. Only ever got one date. First thing she said is “oh, you aren’t that short!” Didn’t get a second date. Get maybe one match a month that goes nowhere. Still paying for it in the hope that I meet somebody who isn’t superficial. I don’t get likes, I swipe on every girl without looking and then decide if I want to pursue if and when I rarely get a match. I also only match with hippos, and my one, my single standard is “don’t be fat” because I’m not fat and I won’t let myself be fat after I saw what it did to my fathers health growing up.

Also get the occasional match from a girl way out of my league…and she’s promoting her onlyfans lol.

Z0mbs · 2025-02-28T08:34:02+00:00

This I can answer in detail.

For context, I am 1,82cm 30M. I would say am very slightly above average in terms of looks. I have had several partners and have been called "cute" by some women. But I am not the guy who's approached by them. If I go to a party I still have to do all the heavy lifting, being charming, approaching, making them laugh, etc... Also, I just moved to a very small valley and there are not many people who use the apps here, so thake this with a pinch of salt.

Before starting my profile I researched extensively and did some analysis on what makes a profile a "good profile", because I knew how hard it is for men on the apps. The answer? As expected, the only thing that counts are pictures. NOTHING ELSE counts. Of course if you write "I just want to murder people" in your bio you might have some problems, but I think that's evident.

I have 0 good pictures of myself, as do meny men. So I asked one of my friends here who is quite good at taking pictures and has a professional camera (emphasis on this. DO NOT take pictures with your phone.) to take some shots of me in different locations and doing different things. Some examples: picture of me at a bar laughing, one full body, several pictures of me doing mountain sports (this is my main hobby) and one "funny picture". For the perfect profile I am only missing one group picture.

What I want to explain here is that, you HAVE to put effort into pictures. They are what defines you on the app. You have to "craft" your profile and tell the story that you want to tell. Also, don't do like a professional indoor shoot on a white background. Go around and take some pictures that will not seem "fake", when in reality they are. Almost all good pictures are staged at least a bit. In the end, the effort was super worth it.

So, after doing all of this and writing a normal bio (nothing exeptional) I started swiping, WITH INTENT. I only swiped right on girls that I found attractive and that shared at least something in common with me. The results are varied. Still, I did not have many matches, I would say 1 a week, 2 if I was lucky. Many of these led to nowhere as the conversation quickly died by a lack of response from the women's part. Also, I basically decided that if a person stops responding for more than 2 days it would not even be worth to double text. Remember this guys, there is NO excuse to ghost. It just means they are not interested in you and they don't value your time and attention.

I went out with several girls and I have to say, it was a pleasant experience overall. I was never stood up and they were almost always decent human beings. What I did not like however is that many of them were different from the pictures, usually fatter. This is unfortunately a deal breaker for me. Also most of them don't really know what they want, they told me they use Tinder as a hobby basically, despite writing in their profile that they want something serious.

What did I get out of all of this 6 months of apps? A couple of FWB and some random hookups. I am looking for a serious commited LTR, so for now I did not find what I was looking for. I have to say that the app experience IS exhausting and can really take a toll on your confidence. All the ghosting, all the hope I put into people and then gets shut down... it really makes you a bit jaded and you realize that nobody really cares and so you should also not care about other people. Never get your hopes up, never put too much effort into texting, etc... it's like a vicious circle. I don't like it.

The pros? I got to meet way more women than I could ever meet normally. It is hard to date in person. Way harder. You never know if the other person is interested or is just being nice, you never know if you are bothering them. At least on the apps you know they are looking for something. What exactly I don't know, but something.

So, the apps are, unfortunately, a necessary evil. Personally, I use them as an plus to irl dating. If it works, nice, it if it doesn't, it's ok. Never put faith in the apps, but use them as a tool to complement your dating life.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk!

InterestingDiamond35 · 2025-02-28T10:22:23+00:00

My experience was basically equivalent to hugging a porcupine

RoseyButterflies · 2025-02-28T11:17:55+00:00

Great I was on a few I had hundreds of messages and likes within the first week. Met my boyfriend on POF. Been together 7 years

50pciggy · 2025-02-28T20:30:22+00:00

Tinder is a desert, Grindr is a meat market.

AlmostKindaGreat · 2025-02-28T21:22:44+00:00

I use apps in big US cities. I'm mostly looking for something casual-ish and I say as much on my profile. YMMV

Grab bag of observations:

For men it really is the top X% and then all the rest

I'd put myself in the top 30-40% or so for a lot of my life. I got almost no matches. I did a glow up, got fit, 15% body fat, perfect haircut/grooming, great clothes that fit me, and optimized my photos. I'm realistically in the top 10% now and it's day and night. Now I get tons of matches.

If you're a man and not physically impressive with great photos I would not use dating apps or have very low expectations. Pursue different options as your primary method for meeting women. It sucks and isn't fair at all but it's just the way it is.

People are flaky AF

Even if you're very attractive, there are still tons of women who are just bored and messing around for validation on the app with no intent of meeting anyone IRL. If I schedule a few dates I usually realistically expect one of them to show up. When they all don't flake I'm suddenly very busy that week! Haha

I never show up to a date without confirming the day of because it's usually a waste of time. With some experience you can kind of tell by responsiveness and attitude whether they're likely to flake or not and cut your losses earlier.

I've heard guys are flaky too, maybe for different reasons. This is annoying and likely worse than with people you meet in person somewhere.

People (who don't flake) are no better or worse than ones you meet anywhere else

I think it's bizarre when people say or suggest that people from dating apps are this different breed of scumbag people just because you met them on an app. They say "Of course he/she did X. You met him/her on an app!"

I do believe flakiness is even worse than it is with people you meet in person but other than that they're just... people. I encounter good, bad, and all other sorts of women with the same frequency as those I met in real life. If apps work for you you'll meet the same type of people, faster. You'll meet more people who are terrible and more great people in the same amount of time. That's my experience anyway.

The_Forgotten001 · 2025-02-28T22:56:08+00:00

I get matches on the dating apps, mostly older women and liberal political women( I am not liberal). I usually set up a date within the first day, When I click with someone I usually get off the apps until I'm single again my last relationship from an app was serious but we ended things over her cleaning habits(lack of).

Usually I'll get at least 1 real match a day between the apps, Since I'm not looking for hook ups anymore it's been harder for me to find a woman that shares my hobbies. At this point though I can wait as long as needed because after all the other relationships I've been in finding a woman that matches my hobbies is a must. Problem is not many women are gamers. So I pass on pretty much on all profiles that don't elude to something like that.

It's been even harder finding a female gamer IRL but I got time.

Traditional_Lab1192 · 2025-03-01T04:45:31+00:00

I downloaded Tinder when I was 19 and I got over 500 likes in like 3 hours. I met my first bf up there actually lol. Now, a few years later and a few more dating apps, I’ve been on tonssss of dates talked to a lot of different people, made friends, met some creeps, encountered a dude who is still obsessed with me to this day, encountered unicorn hunters (Yuck), met my 2nd ex who flew me out to Germany, and now I’m currently dating a guy who I met on Hinge.

Its been a rollercoaster lol

waffleznstuff30 · 2025-03-01T05:49:18+00:00

It's a mixed experience.

I would say the apps are pretty much what you make of it. I had a few disappointments. Some shitheads. Dead end first dates. Desperate guys. Audacious behavior. But I ended up meeting my now partner? So they worked.

I think using the apps as a tool is crucial. Don't hedge your bets on them. Use other avenues to meet people? But keep apps as a tool.

It would say vetting takes longer.

But I am glad with who I found on them. Definitely a glitch in the algorithm.

Possible-Memory-1147 · 2025-03-02T01:49:00+00:00

Decent amount of matches, though the quality is very eh. A lot of women will state things about themselves in profiles that just isn't true, which can be kind of annoying to deal with. You say in your bio you're looking for something that's long term and serious, and after a few messages they're bringing up how they're looking for something casual. Part of me assumes it's just some kind of indirect rejection, but shit just say you're not interested at that point lmao

Substantial_Video560 · 2025-03-02T09:38:07+00:00

I've had much luck with them. They did however help me to come out as aromantic, so they were part of my journey.

kayceeplusplus · 2025-02-27T22:01:04+00:00

missmireya · 2025-02-28T03:53:29+00:00

Bad. Long story short- It made me hate & distrust men. Not like I trusted them beforehand, but it got way worse after talking to these guys.

But I'm assuming if youre a middle aged person on the dating apps, your success at finding a meaningful relationship is going to be slim to none.

Edit: I did get lots of likes and matches, but none of those guys were worth getting to know. The vast majority of them were always lying about something.

Combatenjoyer23 · 2025-02-27T17:13:12+00:00

I think I'm slightly above average looking as a dude and I had a pretty funny/interesting bio. I got a decent amount of likes/matches and if I really wanted to, I could've gone on 2-3 dates with different women a month. Of course there was a lot of ghosting, and a lot of "not really feeling" it texts after first dates. But I also did that stuff on my end. Ultimately I think I was pretty successful with it, relatively speaking.

avocadolanche3000 · 2025-02-28T05:48:47+00:00

34M it was a rough go at first, with just a few likes a month and rarely any attractive ones.

I moved to a major city in the north east and brushed up my profile. I started getting a few likes a week in tinder. Still mostly unattractive but occasional cuties. I diversified and found:

Tinder is good for people who date more casually. I don’t mean casual sex. I mean people who can go in a low stakes date and see where it leads. When I started Tinder Premium I got more matches and get about 3-5 per week I’d consider eatable based on the profile (but that translates to one date every week or two)

For some reason I don’t get many likes on Bumble at all but some of my best matches were through there.

FaceBook Dating I got a ton of likes for a while but they are 95% goblins. I turned the filter on pretty specific, so now I only see women who match like 8 things, and about half the time I like them they like me back.

Altogether after a year I had a couple hundred matches between the four apps, most of them through Tinder. I dated probably 20-30 women and slept with I think 10 of them. I had a six month open relationship and a couple short term things and FWB situations and ONS.

It’s depressing. I think I’ve found someone and we’ve started dating monogamously, but I’m worried we might not be compatible long term.

moocowkaboom · 2025-02-28T07:37:48+00:00

I get an okay amount of likes/matches from woman I'd say are more attractive than I ever imagined I could pull, but almost nothing in terms of relationships. Over the past 3 years Ive gone on a lot of first dates, and only a couple situationships. One of those situationships ended rather poorly. They honestly drive me insane i feel, maybe I just pick bad women

SlippyAdventurous · 2025-02-28T17:10:57+00:00

I haven't had a date from a dating app in 12 years because I don't settle for women that are obese, Trans, have serious issues or flaws or who have kids.

If we took Allll those people out of what we're talking about, thats like 90% of the people that I match with, or who like me, probably hundreds of "women." The last 10% I have gotten maybe a dozen matches with women that weren't exactly equals and that weren't promising matches and most of those ghosted me. Less just weren't interested and the rest just fizzled out and straight up didn't message me even if I messaged them.

I found 1-2 decent matches in those 12 years that just ghosted.

It's bleak out there for men on dating apps. It's hard to not try to return to them because you want to have some hope.

Women don't want to hear it but if you think you can treat men this way or come back to them when you have a high body count, you're delusional. Men like me in our experiences are just going to hold out for women who've never dated casually and or just date younger women. Men like me only see women with high body counts as someone who's made herself into someone to have sex with, not to get married to.

And if women don't want body count to matter they'd have to start dating and sleeping with men in their league that they don't find attractive so that those men can start experiencing what average women on dating apps get to experience.

If women don't want to make up for that inequality then we're just going to continue to see this race to the bottom in dating we've been seeing as well as men, particularly young men, continuing to be apathetic to women's causes.

Women can ignore the imbalances in dating and be apathetic. But you're just giving men a license to be similarly apathetic to women's issues. That doesn't go away just because women don't owe men anything.

MiddleZealousideal89 · 2025-02-27T17:42:40+00:00

Pretty decent. Tried Tinder, think I was on it for like a month. Matched with a couple of guys, one of them turned into a fwb, met another guy who was living in the neighbouring city. I have to call the second guy to ask what he wants for dinner tonight. Going to be 6 years together this year.

Edit for details: I was 26－27ish at the time, and I was living abroad in China at the time, the dating pool was the local foreigner community.

Makuta_Servaela · 2025-02-27T17:31:29+00:00

My experience: I used Bumble, mostly, which has a really low swipe-per-day rate, and I'm not on it every day.

When I'm looking for dudes, I get maybe 2-3 dozen matches a week. All of them ghost, are just looking for hookups, etc, clearly didn't read my bio, etc. I think like once a month I will find a guy who can actually hold a conversation for a few days. Have gotten no dates from them, though.

When I'm looking for women, I get about 5 matches a week, and 2 of them are actually dudes pretending to be their girlfriends/looking for a threesome, 2 ghosts, and 1 is incompatible. I would get a good match and a date scheduled maybe once every 2-3 months, and usually the date went really well, but by date 2-3, something incompatible would come up.

A woman's incompatibility is usually much more minor than a dude's incompatibility for any dude on or off app I've tried to date. Ex: The dude either has no interests in common with mine, lied about his age by like 20 years, lied about a shared interest, Conservative, has no interest in my safety or health (whines about wearing a condom during oral, doesn't realise he shouldn't touch his own genitals and then use the same hand to touch mine, drives unsafely, Pro-Life, etc)

For a woman, it's usually just a bunch of little stuff that I can overlook one at a time, but are just a bit too much together for me.

Silver_Past2313 · 2025-02-27T18:09:17+00:00

In college a couple years ago I used the apps with practically no success for 2 years then got 1 LTR with a decent girl. About 300 matches, 5 dates, 1 LTR, 2 years.

_weedkiller_ · 2025-02-28T10:49:38+00:00

When I first started using them I still dated men. I live in a densely populated area and nature has aligned me with today’s current beauty standards. Therefore I got a lot of matches and a lot of sexual harassment with it.
I had a few matches from women.

Now I only swipe on women/non binary people and it’s definitely harder but I still get matches. It’s still difficult to get off the app and date because people just don’t remember to go back and check and continue the conversation.

The person I’m with currently we did match on an app, but that’s not how we met. It’s only when I noticed we had matched on Tinder I knew they were interested in me in that way.
How did I meet them? It involved massively challenging my social anxiety and changing my mindset. I did a few years swiping with no success and complaining about it. Then I started actually going to events (alone) which was excruciatingly uncomfortable to begin with but eventually I started seeing the same faces and ended up in a social crowd. I was knew this person through that and was interested but didn’t realise we had matched on Tinder until I opened the app months later.

Trancetastic16 · 2025-02-28T11:04:40+00:00

I’m 26, Autistic, Disabled, Bisexual, a Non-binary gender identity, average Australian male weight and height, Child-free, and live in a small city close to one other small city and two other major cities, one being my state’s capital. All within my 100 mile range.

I use the free versions of Hinge and Bumble.

In my profile, I do my best to be detailed, have photos of me with my dogs and cat and doing various activities, and my overall dating strategy is confidently “nichemaxxing” to those who would fit my niche.

I am strict with my filtering and swipe Yes on perhaps 1% of people due to most people not being Child-free, not Bisexual, or minimally detailed profile and photos, but am attracted to an extremely wide-variety of people who are child-free and bisexual and between ages 20-50.

Generally I receive 2-4 matches a month, usually with Bisexual men and other Transgender people.

In my experiences most average men receive 1-4 matches a month depending on their appeal to their local culture.

This feels like a low amount for me, but I still experience social anxiety keeping up with even one match because I’m aware most people aren’t compatible and that it most likely will not work out at any time, and options are scarce, but that I still have to try, and see a pleasant conversation at least as a win even if we don’t end up compatible/having a connection.

After 6 months I haven’t gotten a date out of it but continue to persist every couple of days.

Title	What's YOUR experience with dating apps?
Author	backstabber81
Upvotes	20
Comments	122
Date	February 27, 2025 4:18 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1izjkey/whats_your_experience_with_dating_apps/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/whats-your-experience-with-dating-apps.1545122 https://theredarchive.com/post/1545122

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