Recently I conducted an experiment: I downloaded Tinder and Bumble, put the best possible photos of myself up and wrote a bio which simply said “I’m better in real life” and listed my height at 6’4” (in my previous experience, the bio didn't seem to matter all that much).

I'm not going to post my photos for obvious reasons, but I'm a solid 7/8, as I said, 6'4", muscular and fit (I'm often asked if I played football on the street).

On the flip side, for comparison’s sake, I continued doing cold approach.

SOD (swipe/online dating) should have had an advantage, because for every woman I approached I swiped on 20 on each of the apps (40 total)—and I swiped right on some women I would not be attracted to enough to approach. I carried on the experiment for a week. In sum, I cold approached 15 women and swiped on 600.

Here are the results:

  • Tinder: 0 matches. That’s right, not a single woman on Tinder (I live in a metro area of 2 million) thought I was attractive enough to swipe right. Not one.
  • Bumble: 3 matches. Of the 3, 1 contacted me—and the kicker: the only reason she swiped right was that she saw me singing karaoke!
  • Cold approach: 3 numbers, 5 Insta’s (DMing is almost as good as texting), and 1 pull--ironically enough, a girl I met at the karaoke bar.

Observations:

A) Women are stupid picky when it comes to SOD. Utterly divorced from reality. In fact, what’s somewhat galling about the experience is that I know for a fact that many of the women I swiped on would be STOKED if I approached them IRL. Yet they did not swipe right.

B) Women are super passive. Why didn’t those two other matches on Bumble text me? IDK, but now they’ve missed their chance because I deleted the apps as soon as the week was over. Honestly having the apps on my phone felt dirty. Ugh!

C) How we appear and act online is radically different than IRL. I’ll concede that my photos perhaps don’t convey what I look like very well—but they can’t be that far off, right? They are pictures… of me.

And yet, the divergence in reaction I get online vs. IRL is astonishing. In person, whether at a bar or coffee shop or wherever, women notice me, and those I approach often give me their number or social media. But on SOD… crickets.

D) IDK what it’s like for other guys, but I cannot say this with enough emphasis—if you’re not getting regular matches with people you’re excited about meeting and genuinely attracted to, get out of there.

E) The women I met doing cold approach were on orders of magnitudes hotter than the women I matched with (because why approach women who aren't fucking hot?). Cold approach was an average of HB 8, matches were average of HB 6.

Gents, learn cold approach.